Not all of Emilia Pérez works. The film is a home run hitter swinging for the fences at every at bat. Sometimes it knocks a scene out of the park. Sometimes it strikes out on three pitches, all well outside of the strike zone. It's a musical featuring mostly conversational songs which occasionally are unexpectedly bolstered by a full choir. It's a story about transition and change but is highlighted by characters falling back into bad habits which question how much people actually change. And it's a tale of characters struggling with real emotional turmoil in a plot that is more interested in melodrama.
Our story involves a struggling lawyer (Zoe Saldana) offered a life-changing position by a drug cartel leader (Karla Sofía Gascón) who enlists her help to disappear and transition into a new life as a woman whose new identity gives the film its name. When Emilia finds her years later, Rita (Saldana) is dragged back into the drama introducing the cartel leader's somewhat unstable widow (Selena Gomez) and children to their "Aunt Emilia" without explaining who she truly is. What could possibly go wrong?
Falling further into soap opera nonsense, including a final act involving kidnapping and ransom, Emilia Pérez is hit-and-miss. What makes the film a bit infuriating is how well some of the scenes work, at times despite of the plot. Character-driven moments, especially those from Gascón and Saldana, provide the film's best scenes, but writer director Jacques Audiard, who adapted Emilia Pérez from Boris Razon's 2018 novel Écoute, is only interested in that type of storytelling about half the time. The unconventional film is certainly worth seeing for its performances highlighted by moments that are likely to capture your interest and imagination and may ultimately win you over (but perhaps not enough to forgive Emilia Pérez all of its flaws).
Watch the trailer- Title: Emilia Pérez
- IMDb: link
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