Release Date – 25th October 2024, Cert – 15, Run-time – 2 hours 12 minutes, Director – Jacques Audiard
Lawyer Rita (Zoe Saldaña) is recruited by a feared cartel boss to help her transition, subsequently working together in very different lives to help those with missing family, whilst keeping secrets from Emilia’s (Karla Sofía Gascón) own family about their presumed-dead father/ husband.
Emilia Pérez’s opening musical number is a grand, glitzy piece of flashy world building. Zoe Saldaña’s Rita paces through the streets, a crowd of dancers assembling behind her, as she runs through the opening argument she’s just written before heading into court. Pitched as the main character, she walks into the courtroom and pushes the written argument towards her male boss who then begins to recite it for the jury. Struggling to be heard and the make the progress she wants to make Rita is called upon by cartel boss Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón) to help arrange the best possible gender-affirming surgery, and help organise a new life away from crime once transitioned.
Much of this is covered within the first ten-fifteen minutes through about three or four musical numbers. Yet, instead of this time jumping from song to song the majority of musical bursts are brief, as is the case for the film as a whole. In total, only three songs feel as if they were actually written as songs. For the most part dialogue appears to have been set to music at the last minute, bringing a cliched view of a musical where anyone will jump into song at any moment for no apparent reason. Often, just as you’re getting into the style and flow of a song it comes to an abrupt end before we move on to the next scene, and perspective.
As Rita and post-transition Emilia begin to work together in helping families of missing people either reunite with their loved ones, or more likely find peace in knowing what happened to them, they find themselves keeping the secret of what really happened to Manitas from his wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and children – who believe that he died after disappearing – who they have taken in to care for as they grieve. Once under the same roof Rita shifts away from the main character as a three-hander unfolds, yet with the divide between Jessi and Emilia, and Rita off working, the trio barely share the screen together meaning that the perspective constantly shifts back and forth.
This should be Emilia’s story, yet she doesn’t properly start to get the screen to herself from her own perspective until beyond halfway through the film, yet still with jumps to see what another character is up to. It ends up creating a pinging jumble of moments and ideas, increased by the sudden stop-start of verse-and-a-chorus-if-there’s-time. It becomes apparent quite quickly, as Emilia’s idea to help those with missing family begins to come into effect and the film seemingly changes focus once more, that there’s a very busy, overstuffed, narrative here.
Gomez, with very little to do in the first place, and Saldaña are pushed to the side and yet come back into play with one of the few fully-rounded songs as if they never went away. A new relationship for Emilia comes into play while she continues to focus on her work. It’s work that the film wants to make a big deal about, but never quite gives the proper space to for it to properly flourish, and for Pérez to actually feel like the title character and warrant the story that’s eventually formed around her, particularly in regards to the directions that it swerves into.
As each stands plays out and the emotions of each character intensifies, whether via song or not, the film begins to dive into melodrama. Sustained shots, darkening drama and more sudden twists and turns further fuel the impression of this as a soap opera; one big, telenovela. Feeling restless due to rarely settling or allowing its ideas space to breathe it appears to throw everything at the screen in the hope that something sticks. Crumbling from the big Broadway-style opening which holds so much promise.
With songs that feel like they were crafted at the last minute interrupting an overstuffed narrative, melodrama settles in and eventually turns Emilia Pérez into a messy, disengaging soap opera.
Just A Little Bit Random 