Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard, 2024)

For his first Spanish-language film, Audiard is in a bit over his head here with this musical about Mexican drug cartel leader Juan "Manitas" Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón) who offers millions to going-nowhere lawyer Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldaña) to help speed up gender confirmation surgery and transition into the titular character. Under Manitas' threatening gaze, Rita researches the possibilities of such an endeavor which takes her all over the world, including a transgender surgery hospital in Thailand. This occasions a number called "La Vaginoplastia" which, like most of the songs in the film, was co-written by Audiard who also wrote the screenplay. For an unknown jarring reason, the surgeons and patients sing of surgery with a crassness that verges on the offensive. Audiard may have intended it as a parody of trans paranoia. But that suggestion evaporates in a later earnest ballad sung by Emilia about being "half woman, half man" as if gender conforms to precise recipe measurements. So while Audiard could stand a visit to the Genderbread Person, he makes up for this deficiency through the sheer chutzpah of telling this story through spontaneous outbursts of song. Like the performers in all fine musicals, the main characters here, including Selena Gomez as Manitas' beleaguered wife Jessi and Adriana Paz as Emilia's love interest Epifanía, sing into what the great theorist Scott McMillin calls "the voice of the musical," a collective identity that transcends the individual psychology of any particular character no matter how principal. It's a testament to the art form that all four performers shared the Best Actress prize at Cannes in May. And it's a testament to Audiard's conception that we wind up falling in love with each one of them despite their (and the film's) various shortcomings.

Grade: B+