Rating: 6/10
Since its premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Peréz” found itself on just about every end of the critical spectrum. Following its curious premise, the film’s wild swings are only taken further by its refusal to fit into one genre.
There’s an argument to be made that it’s intentional, with Karla Sofía Gascón giving a powerful performance as the titular character, a retired cartel kingpin seeking to fake their death and undergo gender-affirming surgery to start a new life as a woman.
“Emilia Peréz” is undeniably a reflection on identity, and it’s both the film’s greatest strength and most glaring dissonance. Audiard and Gascón paint a sincerely compelling picture of someone who longs to be true to themself, and it’s a fitting microcosm for a film that faces a similar problem.
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While Audiard has always been willing to play on the edges of genre, “Emilia Peréz” is a swan dive into the absurd, shifting from comedy to drama to song on a minute-to-minute basis. It’s by no means done poorly, and the original songs by French singer Camille Dalmais are perfectly catchy when they want to be. The problem lies with the film’s refusal to sit in one mode for more than a few minutes.
The only performer able to stand her ground against the film’s inconsistencies is Zoe Saldaña, coming off a decade-long stretch of sci-fi/superhero fare. Saldaña’s role is a foil to Gascón’s, offering a figure on the other side of the law whose path crosses with Peréz more than once. It’s surprisingly in the middle hour of “Emilia Peréz” that Saldaña truly shines, with room for a much more reactive performance and an incredibly fun musical number in “El Mal.”
“Emilia Peréz’s” trifecta of leading women is rounded out by Selena Gomez, filling in a role that oscillates between dramatic centerpiece and comic relief. Gomez puts in a respectable effort, and her pop star background lends itself well to a handful of musical numbers; however, her performance is ultimately swept away in the torrent of tonal whiplash that constitutes most of “Emilia Peréz.”
It’s hard to say what keeps Gomez from finding the gravitas of Saldaña or Gascón, but a thoroughly unimpressive romantic B-plot and a smattering of dreadful dialogue don’t lend her any favors.
When taking in “Emilia Peréz” from a bird’s-eye view, it’s hard not to wonder if most of the film’s shortcomings are symptomatic of its overarching problem. Two or three scenes stick out as the emotional cruxes of the movie, but it’s rare for any of them to get more than two or three minutes of runtime before “Emilia Peréz” switches gears again.
Audiard and the film’s leading women would be more than capable of handling any of the movie’s ideas in a vacuum, but the incessant maximalism exhausts both the audience and characters.
For as messy and tortuous as “Emilia Peréz” is, it’s hard not to feel something watching it.
However sporadic they may be, Gascón’s moments in the spotlight are wholly captivating, and they suggest that a much more effective film might be within reach. Gascón seems poised to become a star in her own right, and a backing performance by Saldaña reminds us how much she brings to her work.
“Emilia Peréz” can be hard to buy into fully, and it might not hit all the marks it aims for, but its earnestness and unapologetic gusto can’t be denied.
