This bonkers Oscars fave might be the most divisive film of the year

EMILIA PEREZ ★★½

(MA) 132 minutes

By the time the fourth musical number kicks off in Jacques Audiard’s audacious Emilia Perez – a song where Zoe Saldaña’s righteous defence lawyer Rita trudges through an austere clinic in Bangkok gathering information about sex change operations while a surgeon chants “mammoplasty!“, “vaginoplasty!”, “chondrolaryngoplasty!” like an extra in Les Miserables – you’ll know if you’re in for a good time or Googling how cinemas give refunds.

Audiard, the French filmmaker of arthouse hits including The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) and Rust and Bone (2012), has crafted the sort of cinematic big swing that rarely gets across the line, let alone resounding critical praise. This is, after all, an all-Spanish musical about a feared Mexican drug lord named Manitas (Karla Sofia Gascon) who undergoes gender surgery, goes into hiding from her wife (Selena Gomez) and children, and – after a queer awakening with the ex-wife of a disappeared foe – reemerges as the head of an NGO that seeks to assist the victims of Mexico’s cartel wars. Yes, that old tale.

Despite a bonkers tone that’s been labelled “Douglas Sirk by way of Pedro Almodóvar” and “Sicario meets Mrs Doubtfire”, it’s somehow already proven a festival hit – winning the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival, earning a field-leading 10 nominations at the Golden Globes (a record in the musical or comedy category), and becoming this awards season’s breakout Oscars favourite.

Clearly at the heart of the film’s success is its leading performances, including Spanish trans actor Karla Sofia Gascon as the titular character, pop icon Selena Gomez as her tortured wife Jessi, and Saldaña as Rita, the frustrated lawyer looking to make a societal difference. Saldaña, a former ballerina, hasn’t had an opportunity to showcase her dance training since her debut in Centre Stage (2000), but she performs the film’s most – you might say, only (there’s no way you’ll be hearing these plodding tunes, by French singer Camille and composer Clement Ducol, beyond the theatre) – impressive musical number, El Mal, a furious shot at elite hypocrisy.

The material the trio’s working with, however, is more scattershot. With its three-act structure, heightened melodrama, musical breakouts and tragic ending, the film plays like an opera, albeit one informed by B-grade VHS-era thrillers and sappy telenovelas. It’s a bizarre and intriguing mix when countered with Audiard’s realist visuals, all grimy cityscapes and back-alley shadows. But the film’s regressive politics leave a sour taste.

Online, trans writers have already debated the film’s representation of its lead character’s journey, offering both praise and ridicule. Watching the film, I felt uncomfortable with the way Emilia Perez’s gender transition is linked to her moral transition from violent crime boss to social justice warrior, not to mention a particularly rough scene that suggests an existential struggle between her femininity and her “true” (pre-transition) nature, brutal in its masculinity (“half he, half she,” the film has the character awkwardly describe herself, in song).

For a film that puts a trans story and performer front and centre, you’d expect more than the sort of provocative silliness that’s seen trans lives become perennial fodder for conservative culture wars. But I see debates around the movie only continuing as its hype expands. Let’s see how the Oscars deal with this one.

Emilia Perez opens in cinemas on January 16.

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