In this installment of MTC Oscar Series, Sean M. Donovan and Caitlan Truelove offer their thoughts on Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, a Spanish-language musical about a Mexico City lawyer who helps a cartel kingpin transition, starring Zoe Sandaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Selena Gomez.
Sean M. Donovan: Despite its significance as the first film to win an Oscar nomination for an openly trans actor (Karla Sofía Gascón), Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical drama, represents something curdled and nasty masquerading as political filmmaking. Pérez’s high-concept plot—about a Mexican cartel leader and closeted trans woman (Gascón) whose gender affirmation surgery doubles as an escape plan—and its pop-musical styling aspire towards a kind of Almodóvarian camp and excess. But something feels distinctly off in its execution. Could it be the putrid songs that blend together as one sick talk-singy mélange? The dismal representation of life in Mexico, basically as foreign to the French filmmaking team as transness, riddled with reductive clichés of gang fiction and the flashy exploitation of real-world violence? The makeup on Zoe Saldaña as Perez’s fatigued lawyer Rita, a familiar hodgepodge of glum makeup that artists smear on beautiful actresses’ faces to convince us they look “plain”? Possibly, but at the heart of Emilia Pérez is something more sinister: a cynical focus on the optics of social justice that has me refusing to rule out the film isn’t an elaborate prank from a bad-faith filmmaker.
The film’s focus on redemption—as Emilia works with Rita to create a non-profit to address the impact of drug cartel violence and attempts to re-enter the life of her ex-wife (Selena Gomez)– anxiously sidesteps the brutal underlying hypocrisy that Emilia and Rita had a huge role in causing the very problems they seek to fix. This guilt is fully part of the film—and the pathos, I would suspect, its defenders are drawn to. But the enthusiastic sheen of “girlboss” victory of its grandest moments espouse, like Saldaña’s big musical number “El mal,” are so overdrawn as to appear mocking. Symbolic victories of international wealth exchange, slapped with a rainbow coat of paint, are the film’s key celebrations. This, like many aspects of the film, erodes rather than empowers the unique vitality of a trans woman lead in a major arthouse success (and said trans woman lead’s politics even further the film’s cumulative disappointment).
One of the ticking-clock threats of the film is when “the man in Emilia,” gender-essentialist rage and domination in tow, will emerge, revealing a thoroughly reductive and transphobic understanding of gender that neutralizes the film’s theoretical positive impact. Emilia Pérez is certainly an unusual Oscar contender, and one wonders how and when we will get another like it, as major media companies like Disney and Meta take deliberate steps away from trans content in a hateful, rightward cultural shift. But the film itself is certainly no prize, reflecting a cynical stab at multicultural inclusion that is hollow and far-removed from the communities it alleges to uplift.
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Caitlan Truelove: As a film/TV/musical theatre scholar, I stand by the following:
- Any genre can inhabit a musical.
- Musicals can address a wide range of topics.
- Characters do not need a reason/excuse/plot device to break into song.
Lawyers singing about the injustices of the justice system. Songs about taking antidepressants, celebrating corn, and disillusionment with the “American Dream.” Characters revealing their innermost desires/feelings/fears just because they can (or because of an outer space entity or magical being). All of these things can work in a musical. Or so I thought.
There is a particular heightened reality that occurs in film and television musicals called Musically Enhanced Reality Mode [MERM], coined by musicologist Raymond Knapp. This transition from traditional speaking scenes to musical number is marked by a variety of audiovisual enhancements: lip-synching to pre-recorded songs, manipulation of audio elements, elaborate camera positioning, different acting styles, unexplained costume and set changes, or a combination of these elements. According to Knapp, these elements, though artificial, increase intimacy between the viewer and the characters singing.
However, while watching Emilia Pérez, I felt an unevenness in the way musical numbers began. Half of the time, characters broke out into song with no visual or musical warning, but other times there was clarity from MERM or an audio dissolve that indicated a musical number. This lack of continuity reminded me of Joker: Folie à Deux (though to be fair, that film was already desperately trying to not be a musical). Even with Emilia Pérez’s eclectic way of establishing a musical number, I also felt that some numbers ended as abruptly as they began, particularly when Rita (Zoe Saldaña) sings about her dissatisfaction with her job (“Todo y Nada”) and when Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón) raps about her desire to undergo gender-affirming surgery (“El Encuentro”).
Although I was not necessarily expecting Broadway-esque numbers, “Para” is a rousing social justice anthem, with family members and loved ones of murder victims seeking closure singing alongside former hit men who want to atone for the crimes they committed, volunteering at Emilia’s La Lucecita nonprofit foundation. “Bienvenida,” in which Jessi (Selena Gomez) sings about feeling trapped after being welcomed into Emilia’s home, reminded me of opera and musical theatre’s “mad scene,” in which characters perform their heightened emotional and mental states in song.
This mix of tone, content, and placement of musical numbers within dialogue leaves me with extremely nebulous feelings about Emilia Pérez. I could, maybe, accept the argument that the film is poking and pushing at the imaginary boundaries of how numbers can operate within the genre. But even if that argument holds true, that doesn’t mean these musical numbers work. Emilia Pérez may be a musical, but it sure is a baffling one.
Sean M. Donovan is a critic and scholar of LGBTQ media cultures with a PhD in Film, Television, & Media Studies from the University of Michigan. He is currently at work on a book on queer media and nostalgia.
Caitlan Truelove is an adjunct professor at Mount Saint Mary College (NY) and the Editorial Assistant for the Journal of the American Musicological Society. She loves clicker training her orange cat, Clara.
Article thumbnail photo credit: Netflix
In the month of February, MTC is featuring writing on this awards season’s contenders. We asked writers, scholars, and cinephiles for their takes on award hopefuls. By placing multiple short reviews in conversation, we hope to open up critical conversation on these films, as each writer highlights what they think is interesting (or excellent, or horrible) about the film.