‘Emilia Pérez’ aims high but doesn’t quite reach the top

Jacques Audiard’s musical thriller can’t achieve its lofty ambitions but still offers more than most films

Acclaimed French film director Jacques Audiard delivered one of the best crime films of the past 20 years in 2009’s “A Prophet.” Audiard returns to the crime world once more, but this time, he travels from the French prison system to the drug cartels of Mexico in an ambitious adaptation of his opera libretto, which he adapted from Boris Razon’s 2018 novel “Écoute.”

While I avoid plot spoilers in my reviews, discussing “Emilia Pérez” without revealing some of its secrets would be difficult. I was vaguely aware of the plot before I sat down and watched the film, which is now on Netflix. Netflix purchased the distribution rights after “Emilia Perez” won a special acting prize for its three female leads, Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofia Gascón, and Selena Gomez, all of whom performed terrific. And while Saldaña and Gomez are American actresses, the film is mainly in Spanish with English subtitles.

Saldaña (in a career-best role) plays Rita Mora Castro, a talented but conflicted lawyer in Mexico who recognizes she is a cog in the political machine where the guilty go free, and innocence is a purchasable commodity. Songs that periodically jettison out of the character’s lips serve as that fourth wall, theater of the mind, to address the situation occurring in Mexico with the drug cartels and enhance the characters’ inner conflicts and struggles.

It doesn’t take long for Saldaña’s Castro to be reached out by a cartel kingpin who wants to make her an offer she can’t refuse. The kingpin, Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, allows Saldaña to refuse, and if she does, no harm. But if she accepts, Del Monte will make her rich beyond her wildest dreams, and she will be of service as long as Del Monte deems necessary.

In these early moments, the premise of “Emilia Pérez” intrigues, and Saldaña’s meeting with Del Monte provides an unnerving sense of danger that creates an unease in the stomach. Del Monte is a curious figure who captivates the audience—you want to know more. Where is this film headed?

And now, for those readers not looking for spoilers, you could leave this review, much like Saldaña’s character, and go about your business. But if you take the offer to come along for the journey, then beware: I am about to reveal the twist.

Del Monte requests that Saldaña help him become his true self. Saldaña will do whatever it takes to arrange for Del Monte to disappear from his life in the cartel and become what he knows inside he’s always been: a woman.

Karla Sofia Gascón, a trans actress, plays Del Monte under makeup effects and then the titular Emilia Pérez, who he becomes through surgeries and hormone therapies. The first hour of the film, which I found the best part of the movie, deals with the process of Del Monte becoming Emilia Pérez. Saldaña dutifully performs her role as a lawyer, ensuring all aspects of Monte/Pérez’s wishes come true. Part of these duties includes faking Del Monte’s death and relocating his wife (played by Gomez) and children. 

Four years later, Saldaña enjoys life in Europe, hobnobbing in higher society circles that her newfound wealth affords her. At a dinner party, she sits beside a woman who introduces herself as Emilia Pérez. By the end of the dinner, Saldaña, who never saw Del Monte’s transformation, realizes that her business with the former cartel drug lord is not over and may never be over.

Emilia Pérez wants to return to Mexico and asks Saldaña to join her and help return Pérez’s wife and children (who currently reside in Switzerland) to Mexico, too. Saldaña does not want to, but she is smart enough to realize this isn’t a request she can deny.

Gomez and her children believe Del Monte is dead and missing. When they are shuffled back to Mexico to live with Del Monte’s wealthy cousin Emilia Pérez, they have no idea she was once Del Monte.

And thus begins the second half of “Emilia Pérez,” where the perfect life Del Monte dreamed of, this opportunity to leave the cartel world behind and live as the woman he always knew he was, begins to fall apart due to the lies built to conceal his new identity. Emilia Pérez tries to undo crimes of the past through philanthropy in Mexico and trying to locate missing people killed at the hands of the cartel; she can’t escape the demons of her former life.

Audiard asks interesting questions. What is the self? Do the masks we wear to conform to society’s demands come off entirely if we assume a different one? Del Monte believes that if he can live life as Emilia Pérez, society will accept him, and as Pérez, Del Monte is. There is never a moment in the story where any character is suspicious of Pérez’s former identity. However,h one of Pérez’s children recognizes some aspects of Del Monte in Pérez, and in one soft song, the child sings about the smell of his father, which he can recognize in Pérez.

Along the way, there is an intriguing new romance for Pérez with a woman whose abusive husband’s body is located through Pérez’s efforts and a third-act struggle with Gomez, who wants to move on entirely from Pérez’s grip. The tragic aspects of the film’s final half hour come at the hands of Emilia Pérez’s desire to control everything, much the way her former identity did as the head of a cartel.

There is a lot to like about this film. I wanted to love it, but the second half was bogged down with too many plot deviations. It got tiring, and I asked internal questions, like “What is director Audiard going for?” The songs felt inspired in the movie’s first half; in the second half, I wondered why this movie was a musical. Audiard bit off more than he could chew with this effort. Maybe that happens when you’re aiming for greatness, and there is more here to scrutinize than the average film because Audiard’s movie is of a higher caliber.

It’s interesting, on a thematic level, that several of these fall film offerings deal with the subject of internal and external presentations and desires. “The Substance,” “A Different Man,” and to a lesser extent, “Wicked,” “Conclave,” and now “Emilia Pérez” all give us stories and characters dealing with a world that sees one exterior and an internal need to either preserve that image, alter that image, reveal a different image, or become someone new to achieve the desires of heart and soul. Those aspects of “Emilia Pérez” are the most thought-provoking. While I cannot give the film as high marks as I would have liked, it is worth watching if you are looking for more challenging entertainment, and with its accessibility on Netflix, chances are you could watch it right away.

James Kent is the publisher’s assistant at the Mountain Times. He is also the co-host of the “Stuff We’ve Seen” podcast at stuffweveseen.com.