Emilia Perez: Audiard surprises, amazes and enchants [critique]

A multi-award-winning musical comedy at Cannes about a Mexican drug trafficker who decides to change sex, carried by a quartet of flamboyant actresses, including THE revelation Karla Sofía Gascón

It was one of the highlights of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Emilia Perez left with a double reward: a collective female interpretation prize and the Jury prize which allowed Jacques Audiard to complete his collection of Cannes trophies after the Grand Prix d'A prophet in 2009 and the Palme d'Or of Dheepan in 2015. But his tenth feature film is no repeat. It once again reflects a desire to never rest on his laurels, to confront new worlds, after the western with The Sisters Brothers and the romantic comedy with The Olympics.

Except that Emilia Perez goes further, higher, stronger. A musical comedy about a Mexican drug lord who wants to change sex. Just that! But not only that! A crazy bet in which Audiard mixes – no pun intended – genres with incredible dexterity. Singing, dancing, Greek tragedy, action movie that shoots, narco movie, melodrama… Enter Emilia Perez is the promise of an incredible, spectacular, thrilling journey for 2 hours and 10 minutes without a break. The story opens with Rita (Zoé Saldana), a precarious lawyer forced to use her talent to defend criminals that she is furious to have acquitted almost every time. And whose life changes the night she is kidnapped by this drug trafficker, Manitas, to help him change sex and become Emilia, the woman he has always been deep down, after pretending to be dead to his family. Change sex therefore but also nature because in an act of redemption, Emilia will create a charity providing assistance to the victims of drug traffickers while managing – always with the help of Lisa – to reunite his wife (Selena Gomez) and their children by pretending to be a distant relative.

Drugs, violence, gender transition… Emilia Perez is fully in keeping with its time, but here, the subjects are at the service of the film and not the other way around. No trace of a message to hammer home. Just cinema. Nothing but cinema. Of an incredible fluidity in the script given the multitude of twists and turns that occur, of an assumed first degree and so refreshing in an era of king cynicism. Of a stunning musical quality thanks to the melodies so divinely hemmed by the singer Camille and her companion Clément Ducol (up to a revisitation of the Passers-by by Brassens in Spanish which tears your heart in the very last straight), to the powerful choreographies of Damien Jalet which accompany, shake up, energize the story without crushing it and which symbolize deep down what is Emilia Perez. A film that doesn't flex its muscles but opens hearts.

And he also owes this to the embodiment of his heroines. The common trait in all of Audiard's films, the one that revealed Tahar Rahim, Karim Lekou, Reda Kateb and offered some of the most beautiful roles of their careers to Marion Cotillard, Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, Matthias Schoenaerts… From the first shot ofEmilia Perezwe have the feeling of rediscovering Zoé Saldana, the superstar ofAvatar to whom no one before Audiard had entrusted a role so rich in fullness and delicacy. And if we can also salute the compositions of Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz, there is in this quartet an obvious figurehead. An actress whose destiny has just changed: Karla Sofia Gascon who, like the character she plays, was also a man before her transition in 2018. As soon as she appears on screen, everything takes on another dimension. Her character, the setting, her partners, the story that is told to us. She is not about to forget this role and this film. Neither will we!

By Jacques Audiard. With Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoé Saldana, Selena Gomez… Duration 2h10. Released on August 21, 2024