Review: Emilia Pérez (2025)

Emilia Pérez

Rating

Director

Jacques Audiard

Screenplay

Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius, Nicolas Livecchi (Novel: Boris Razon)

Length

2h 12m

Starring

Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramirez, Mark Ivanir, Eduardo Aladro, Emiliano Hasan

MPAA Rating

Original Preview

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Review

Conventional stories about drug runners are passé and Emilia Pérez hopes to add two new twists to make it sensational but can it overcome inherently problematic archetypes?

Zoe Saldaña takes the lead as Mexican lawyer Rita Mora Castro, a frustrated corporate lawyer who’s approached by a drug lord wanting to undergo gender-affirming surgery. Karla Sofía Gascón plays the warlord and later the titular Emilia Pérez who wants to live life as she sees herself but knows she cannot accomplish it while in the hyper-masculine drug trade. The pair work together with an Israeli surgeon (Mark Ivanir) to accomplish the dream while relocating the drug lord’s wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and young children to Switzerland where they will be outside the sphere of influence of the impending drug war.

Emilia relocates for a time but becomes dissatisfied being away from her children and meets a now-successful Rita to arrange for access to her secreted-away wealth. Under the guise of being her past self’s cousin, Rita arranges for Jessi and their two kids to move into the lush estate she’s acquired for herself. With the abundance of wealth, Emilia tries to right the wrongs of her past life as a murderous crime boss by starting a foundation to “locate” those victims to help bring closure to their despondent families. It’s through this foundation that she meets Epifanía (Adriana Paz) and becomes infatuated but bristles at Jessi’s desire to move out with boyfriend Gustavo (Édgar Ramírez) including taking their kids with them.

While the trans storyline is certainly a twist on the standard drug war drama, it’s not the most unlikely change. Emilia Pérez is a musical. A non-traditional musical like Dancer in the Dark or 8 Women rather than Chicago or Wicked. The people still break into song and dance at unique moments and the structure of the songs is similar to that of the usual fare but its downbeat numbers and staccato delivery easily set it apart.

The United States certainly dominates the market in the musical genre but the French have their own successful history from the aforementioned 8 Women to Oscar nominee The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Emilia Pérez fits fairly well into that history even if it is a bit of an odd choice to export the musical to Mexico. And that’s perhaps where some of the film’s issues come in. The view of Mexico is from a French perspective, which mutes some of its impact. The tropes and stereotypes aren’t polished or softened to make them more realistic, though doing so would have blunted the film’s edge, especially the entire third act.

The film also struggles with its trans character. Although hiring a trans player to play a trans character is a positive step forward, the character does rely on several trans stereotypes that somewhat inhibit the character’s growth. Gascón is probably the weakest of the three lead performers. She doesn’t handle tonal shifts well and as such her character too often comes off stilted and emotionless. Saldaña on the other hand delivers her best performance. She carries the film on her shoulders and while she isn’t the titular character, she drives the story forward and keeps the audience engaged with her successes and failures. It’s a lived-in performance that puts aside any criticism she might have received for her lackluster work in the Star Trek films or the Guardian of the Galaxy efforts. Gomez is also impressive. If one’s familiarity with her ends with kids television or Only Murders in the Building, one might not realize the range she can effectively convey.

Director Jacques Audiard’s screenplay is in desperate need of revision, it’s a competent script that’s enhanced by his direction. The dance scenes might not have the vitality of similar moments in Wicked, but they convey the necessary narrative information the audience needs to understand what’s going on. They stick out in the film like most historical musical sequences do but they thankfully don’t fall into the trap of needless plot contrivance. Were this material put into the hands of Alejandro G. Iñárritu or Alfonso Cuarón, we might have gotten a more incisive and broadly appealing effort, one that explored more than just the temperamental nature of violence and its infusion into the cores of those who practice it. The film would have felt more like a product of its setting rather than an outsider’s vision of it.

There are elements of Emilia Pérez that are immensely captivating, largely the performances of Saldaña, Gomez, Paz, and Ramírez and a handful of the songs such as the offbeat “La vaginoplastia” and the dance track “Mi Camino”. However, the film suffers from its inability to find the nuance necessary to enliven the film and make it truly sing.