Emilia Perez
Defense Lawyer Rita, is hired by drug kingpin Juan to both ‘help him disappear and also transition into becoming a woman.
Years later, Rita meets Emilia Perez, and discovers that she was once Juan. Now Emilia wants her family back, and Rita brings back Jessi and her boys.
Direction
Quite pretty in all honesty, and has plenty of stylist moments – such as wonderful use of lighting that almost has a ‘play like’ feel about it.
Sadly – this is where the positivity I had with the film ends. I will discuss further shortly but the entire 140m runtime felt like a hallucinogenic experience. There seemed to be little thought put in to most of it, and even has a very bizarre ‘split screen’ in the last part of the film.
Cast/Characters
Zoe Saldana plays Rita, the defense lawyer we meet as the protagonist. We believe she is a passionate ‘for the people’ but within minutes of meeting er she is bought off to work for the drug lord Juan/Manitas. Her friendship/relationship with Him and his family, which evolve into Her relationship with Emilia and HER family is written quite odd.
At one point, she bursts into tears having separated Jessi and her children from Juan – which makes no sense as the relationship between Rita and Jessi was fractured and somewhat antagonistic.
Emilia – who the film is based on is played by Karla Sofia Gascon, also a transgendered actress. Credit where it is due, it was incredibly brave of her to appear in male form. I did not find the ‘change in personality’ believable at all. It felt as if she went from ‘bad man’ to ‘saviour woman’ – which almost gave a ‘men are evil’ representation.
Selena Gomez as Jessi is completely underused, considering the film credits itself on being the ‘journey of three’ women. Jessi feels like an afterthought, and Gomez clearly struggled with her non native dialect.
Screenplay/Setting/Themes
The musical addition made no sense whatsoever, and the singing was either indistinguishable and positioned into dialogue between two characters (between Rita and Dr Wasserman). Some of the songs are just flat out disgusting – Woman to Man/Man to woman. This is supposed to be a serious film? I thought I was watching a Benny Hill/Carry On comedy!
The musical numbers take away from what should have been a solid narrative.
Even from a caucasian Australian, I could see the representation of Mexico was almost completely absent. From the poor Mexican/Portuguese language used, the few if any Mexican performers – and the clearly non Mexican filming location.
The representation of transgenderism is done poorly too. Emilia basically throws her entire family away in order to ‘live her true life’ then demands them back. She goes from a gangster/mobster – to a ‘saint’ – those close to her cannot recognise her (her wife and kids), she puts herself in the spotlight when her enemies want her dead – and she is violent towards Jessi….
None of it makes sense.
This was nominated for an astonishing THIRTEEN Oscars – and when you add that it had the same Oscar campaigner that Shakespeare in Love had, it now makes sense.
Score/Soundtrack
I will just say I hated the musical element. The singing was either added in weirdly in conversation (with odd dialogue) or had completely offensive songs.
Overall
I really did not like this at all. I would not recommend it.
I have changed my rating since my podcast too.
1.5/5
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