Emilia Perez review: A musical that embodies the heart of soap opera without compromising on the narrative!

In this review, karan_mir aka Karan Mirchandani, talks in detail about his experience watching the film festival-favorite Emilia Perez!

There is a lot that could go wrong with this film. As the opening scenes play out, I remember having a distinct feeling of dread that this could be a long two-and-a-half hours. Musicals may not be a genre for me and starting off a courtroom scene with a song that felt hollow had me worried. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Emilia Perez blew me away. The premise jumps off the page immediately. A cartel boss wants to transition into Emilia, and live the rest of her life in the way that she was supposed to. For that, she employs the entire process of transition from gender affirmation surgery to helping her escape the violent world she’s in, hiding her family (wife and two kids) from the cartel and herself. This is where the film begins!

A drug cartel is almost the perfect setting to tell the story of extreme toxic masculinity, raising the stakes of someone from that world wanting to transition. The consequences of the internal struggle and the discrimination are elevated to a less under-the-radar, life-threatening opposition. Emilia Perez is not an internal film; it takes every conflict and manifests it into a person. Being shunned by society is projected into a violent cartel on the hunt for her life. A partner struggling with their husband transitioning into her true self is projected into her not realising Emilia is her husband at all. Emilia, trying to make peace with her past, is risking her life to battle the crimes that she may have also been a part of. And that’s the magic of it! It’s a dazzling soap opera that never once cheapens out the narrative. It takes the same outrageous turns that a telenovela would, but it sucks you in with its imagery and music, at which point you no longer question any of it.

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What should’ve been a clunky shifting of gears from violent underbelly to musical opera is actually the perfect mechanism to tell this story. The film actually expertly uses the songs to perfectly convey the characters' deeper fears, using specific tones and platforms to match who the characters are. Emilia’s wife Jessi, played by Selena Gomez, is one who aspires to a Hollywood lifestyle plunged into love and lust - so all her songs feel like they’re a stylized music video. Meanwhile, with Emilia, a lot of the songs are bathed in the dark lighting of her anxiety and her existential dread about the sacrifices she’s had to make to get there. Zoe Saldana is a lawyer who is fed up with working inside the system, so her performances take place in the realms of reality, but the music lets her express her honest thoughts. 

Emilia Perez is made for the big screen! The kind of ideas and commitment to them are not small or grounded in the slightest. These are vibrant performances but tethered to angst - very much like Emilia herself, a breathtaking turn from Karla Sofia Gascon. It's a performance that towers over everything else after simmering in the background for the first half. Zoe Saldana has a tricky task ahead of her as she has to carry some of the film's early clunkier moments, but she throws herself headfirst into it, steadying the ship and handing the baton quietly to Karla as the plot progresses. Selena Gomez plays to her strengths here; her singing has a different texture here, and she plays her disgruntled wife perfectly. A testament to the film's success is when the first song played, I was alarmed and chuckled as a response, unsure of what was ahead. By the end, I was glued to the screen when the final song played in the third act. A festival gem, for sure!

Emilia Perez had its Indian premiere at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival this year! 

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