The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the opinion of Byte or Byte’s editorial board.
Emilia Pérez is an Oscar award winning musical that has been thrust into the mainstream after its 13 academy award nominations. Emilia Pérez is a musical crime drama that tells the story of Rita (Zoe Saldaña), an underappreciated criminal lawyer, assisting a powerful drug cartel leader Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón), in faking her death and fully transitioning so she can finally be her true self Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón). What follows is the consequences of her abandoning her wife Jessi (Selena Gomez), to raise their two kids and trying to make peace with the atrocities she committed as a cartel leader.
What is Emilia Pérez
The description on Netflix states the film as a “fever dream,” which is usually not how people describe good films or musicals, and that holds true for Emilia Pérez. The musical wants to be a passionate story about redemption, rebirth, and reconciliation but falls short in attempts to tell several stories that work as separate ideas, but together create a jumbled contradicting mess. The original story was inspired by the book Écoute, where a drug dealer transitions to avoid prosecution, which was the original plan for Manitas transitioning according to to AP news. Even with the help of Gascón, arguing to change the storyline, it’s still present. Though Emilia Pérez wants to separate herself from the cartel, she is still receiving funds from her previous occupation. While she changed herself on the outside, she is still a cruel cartel leader until the end where she attacks her former wife in a fit of jealous rage. While the film is attempting to make a point about the real violence happening in Mexico, it fails at taking the necessary precautions to actually address the elephant in the room. Writer Jacques Audriards admits in an interview to not doing any research into the matter, as the film has been blasted by both the queer community for using transness as just a story beat, instead of telling a nuanced tale about a late in life translation, and by the Mexican community by watering down the country as violent gang run country. For a film that is two hours long it fails to make any lasting point about being a trans woman or about the real people who are suffering because of the real violence happening.
Who is Emilia Pérez
Multiple descriptions of this film would make one believe that it follows four women. It does not. Two? Yes. Three? Maybe. Four, only if you count a character that shows up 40 minutes to the end with only a handful of scenes, then sure four. The first woman, the titular character that is Emilia Pérez, is the most fleshed out of the four. The other three just serve as accessories to the story. Pérez, who again, wanted to abandon a life of crime, is still committing crimes. La Lucecita, the charity Pérez runs, is dedicated to finding the remains of missing people and helping the families of the victims find closure. This act comes out of nowhere. She is given a flyer of a man who's been missing for some time and in that moment that's how she realized, “wow, I ruined people’s life.” Then, she proceeds to go around questioning jailed former gang members who are able to remember the exact place they buried this boy and no one questions how she was able to find this information. No one goes, “wow Emilia, that’s odd you know a lot of criminals?” All her hard work is undermined by the fact La Lucecita is funded by Mexico's underground criminals.
Speaking of criminals, Rita is definitely one by the end of the film. She starts off in the film developing a defense for a man who has murdered his wife (“El Alegato”). We learn she doesn’t like defending criminals. She’s not that guilty about it. She's just mad that she's broke, underappreciated for her work, and single. Her work keeps her from having a love life and starting a family (“Todo y Nada”). Even though these ideas are introduced with her character, she still doesn’t have a partner by the end of the film. Pérez tells her she can buy Rita a man—she is serious—before being given the flyer of the missing man. Rita goes from defending a criminal to working with one. She is aware of this contradiction in the song “El Mal” but she seems almost too willing to go along with whatever Pérez tells her too. Her mom is mentioned for three seconds in the beginning of the film and we never see her. Rita starts the film sad, and alone and ends the film sad, and alone. But now she’s rich.
Jessi is Menitas “widowed” wife. She is barely present in the first act of the film. She is unaware of Emilia's elaborate scheme and believes her husband is dead. In the second act she meets his “sister” (Manitas post-transition) whom she has never heard of until after her husband's death. She now is forced to live with a stranger who is way too affectionate towards her kids. She, for good reason, freaks out. Besides being angry or partying, her character only serves as a catalyst for the film's climax. Epifanía (Adriana Paz) is one of the women whose husbands went missing. He was abusive. She planned to stab him if he was alive and said to “throw him away” once learning of his demise. Pérez finds this attractive and they start dating. Nothing else is mentioned about her.
It is a Musical.
While the musical was originally supposed to be an opera, composed and written by French artist Camille and Clément Ducol, the songs feel like an afterthought. During “El Trio,” I didn’t realize it was a song. The film includes 16 tracks with the best ones being okay like “Papá,” a ballad sung by one of Pérez’s children as he remembers his father. It is sparked by him smelling Emilia and saying “you smell like papa,” according to the Netflix English subtitles. Songs like “La Vaginoplastia” are unnecessary. The song is one of two in English, and it is the worst song on the track list. Rita goes to Bangkok to learn about gender reassignment surgery in the broadest sense. While the creators of the musical are not native english speakers, it does not excuse the disgusting chord progression of this song. “A man to woman (Vaginoplasty makes this macho stand)” are real lyrics. Though the audience is forced to sit through this scene, the surgery happens in Tel Aviv following the song “Lady," the other English song, which isn’t nearly as offensive lyrically. The song does misgender Emilia Pérez, and appears to follow the original story line of her only transitioning to escape prosecution. And while Rita is making the argument that she is doing this for herself to the Doctor, Rita has already established by this point in the film she is not above lying. The song is tolerable and is one of the more musical sounding songs in a musical.
This story did not have to be a musical. Unlike musicals like Wicked, Rent, and Falsettos where the music is so driven in the piece, even the mentions of the titles sends shivers down the spine. The music is unremarkable, dull and forgettable. The most memorable song is the most unnecessary and offensive song. The opening number is “El Alegato” but the first song is "Subiendo (Part 1)," and while the lyrics are fine, it is obnoxiously autotuned and in stark contrast to the rest of the sound track. It has the same uninspired sound of “La Vaginoplastia”.
Why?
If you want to create a film about a culture or experience that is not your own, immerse yourself in that culture, or at the very least consult more than just the main translator of the musical. To quote Zoë Saldaña in a recent interview going over the backlash, “the heart of this movie was not Mexico. We weren't making a film about a country. We were making a film about four women. And these women could have been Russian... these women are still very universal women that are struggling every day at trying to survive systemic oppression." The film fails to properly develop all four women's struggles in an oppressive society. Setting is an important part of storytelling, and Saldaña's comment shows how little thought went into it. In a truly loved creative piece, almost every component is deliberate. This musical took two years to write, and maybe it should’ve taken longer.
Sources: IMDb, IMDb, IMDb, IMDb, Goodreads, APNews, IMDb, XFormerlyKnownAsTwitter, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify, IMDb, IMDb, IMDb, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify, ABCNews
Photos: PathéFilms, PathéFilms, PathéFilms
Contact Deja Bradshaw with comments at deja.bradshaw@bsu.edu.
