Already presented at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the prize for best female performances and the jury prize, Emilia Perez also arrives at the 19th edition of the Rome Film Festival in the “Grand Public” section, waiting to be distributed in theaters starting from January 9th next year thanks to Lucky Red.
Baroque and disruptive, visionary and overflowing with energy, the film follows the vicissitudes of a Mexican cartel boss who wishes to embrace his self by carrying out a sex change operation. To do this he will enlist the help of a promising practitioner from a law firm in Mexico City. Played by Karla Sofia Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz e Zoe Saldanaand directed by Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez it is a complex story that talks about the search for one’s self but also, and above all, about love.
A film without labels
Emilia Perez she is many things and the very fact of attributing the protagonist’s name to the film is in itself misleading because Emilia Pérez herself is many things at once. A human being whose explosive femininity clashes with that patriarchal attitude of those who have lived with those (dis)values typical of toxic masculinity; a mass of contradictions that are reflected in the narrative structure chosen by Audiard which oscillates between comedy and drama, between grotesque and lyricism, and which makes the language of the musical its supporting element.
Something which, while creating a sense of alienation, gives the director the opportunity to explore, creating dreamlike and visionary stagings which, throughout the narrative, emphasize the path of Manitas Del Monte/Emilia Pérez (Gascón) and her relationship with the lawyer Rita Moro Castro (Saldaña) and his wife Jessi (Gomez), creating an imposing scaffolding that defies any type of pigeonholing. A bit like its protagonist. Under this front, Emilia Perez he dares stylistically by changing register and direction several times: a characteristic which, without a doubt, contributes to making the film unique but which, on the other hand, confuses and leaves one speechless. The search for excess, in fact, is always functional on a stylistic level, yet on a narrative level it seems that that something extra is missing that would have contributed to closing a circle that seems to remain half-closed – with a bit of dissatisfaction.
Great praise certainly goes to the actresses around whom the narrative develops, from Zoe Saldaña to Selena Gomez to Karla Sofía Gascón. Incarnations of an ever-changing feminine, all three struggle to emerge in a chauvinistic society that does not understand – and probably fears – their strength and their ability to love. In fact, love will change the protagonist’s destiny forever.
A love story
At the end of the day, Emilia Perez it is nothing more than a love story. Love towards oneself and also towards others. With the choice that finally led her to recognize herself by looking in the mirror, the protagonist begins her revolutionary journey of acceptance and self-discovery, leaving behind a world of crimes and violence. Crimes for which she herself will try to find atonement by inaugurating a charity aimed at finding the bodies of the cartel’s victims.
But not only that, Emilia Perez it also brings to the stage an explosive love which, like a fuse, inflames hearts leaving no way out. In fact, if the character of Rita will find in her dedication to Emilia a sort of unresolved resolution, a feeling of love and sisterhood, Emilia and the unaware Jessi will continue to chase each other and touch each other despite having undertaken a different path. After all, love doesn’t look at anyone. This is precisely what Audiard’s film talks about – despite some stumbles: how impossible it is to escape what on the one hand attracts and on the other is synonymous with ruin.
