Jacques Audiard, first favorite of the competition
Jacques Audiard is one of the greatest authors of contemporary cinema above all for this reason: he knows very well what he is doing, even in unknown territories. Participating in the Cannes Film Festival competition after recently receiving the Palme d’Or is an achievement in itself. Because if you simply strengthen your previously successful recipe – and you are not the Dardenne brothers or Ruben Östlund – the risk of a burning relegation in case of failure is high.
His return to competition, 9 years after winning the Palme d’Or Dheepan, it is therefore an event that he did not take lightly. His new film, Emilia Perez, is truly a resounding success and a unique film in his filmography: a musical comedy in Spanish, crossed by other genres and a thousand ideas, brought forward by an excellent South American female cast to tell the story of the sexual transition of a powerful cartel leader Mexican. On paper it’s unlikely. On screen, this improbability translates, in part, into a melodrama of unapologetic kitsch. Radical, the proposal could therefore be judged as ridiculous as it is ingenious.
Overqualified and overexploited, Rita (Zoe Saldaña) uses her talents as a lawyer in the service of a large corporation more inclined to launder criminals than serve justice. But an unexpected exit door opens before her, which will help the leader of the “Manitas” cartel (Karla Sofía Gascón) to close the business and realize the plan she has been secretly perfecting for years: to finally become the woman she had always dreamed of . being.
Transgangster musical
It’s difficult to define exactly this film, which attracts both soap opera prestige, the intimate portrait of sexual transience, political news and gangster films. But this is certainEmilia Perez it’s a stunning cinematic effort, because it touches on everything that makes a total spectacle. Singing, dancing, a romantic thriller plot, and a pop and Latin aesthetic that combines with the naturalistic darkness that constitutes Audiard’s cinema.
On this serious and literally treated topic, we are therefore surprised when Rita, very soon, starts singing and dancing the speech she is preparing in defense of a murderer. A hint of fear looms but, set to the music of Camille and composer Clément Ducol, these musical sequences quickly prove convincing. Always sincere and as in The The Earth paying little attention to the vocal quality of the songs, some of these songs are particularly successful and very moving.
A huge performance
Actress Karla Sofia Gascon initially plays a terrifying man, seemingly the perfect model of violent and omnipotent masculinity, but who has always dreamed of being a woman. By pretending to be dead, the woman she becomes is satisfied, supportive, loving and happy. Having become the antithesis of herself, Emilia works to find the missing bodies of drug trafficking victims, but the man and above all her father who she was has not completely disappeared.
Indeed, after several years of new life spent away from Mexico, the desire to be reunited with his two children is too strong. He then returns to Mexico and pretends to be their aunt, setting them up under her roof with their mother, his ex-wife (Selena Gomez) who doesn’t recognize him at first.
Karla Sofia Gascon’s double performance is sunny, fascinating and gives precious emotions. The writing of the character as well as the performance of her, at least, should logically be rewarded. Around her, Zoe Saldana, a “false” protagonist since it is through her that we discover and explore Emilia Perez, plays the lawyer who agrees to help Emilia with her transition, for financial reasons, and who then becomes her best friend. In a more secondary role, that of the wife of “Manitas”, Selena Gomez plays her part quite well, without her singing skills being called into question more than in the others.
“Watch women rise again”
We’ll have to go back, see again Emilia Perez and put it into perspective, because Audiard reinvents himself without denying himself with a brilliant but complex idea. Director of male destinies and of overwhelming real or symbolic fatherhood, the one who “has seen men fall” since 1994 pushes the idea of him to the maximum and goes further to sublimate it. In fact, he talks about the rejection of a man’s tragic and violent destiny through his rebirth as a woman, and at the same time proposes the future, the “after” of his cinema.
Wondering how Audiard could innovate, offer more of his portraits of crushed men without forgetting them, Emilia Perez it is therefore the perfect answer, a film of the highest level and so far the best of the Cannes 2024 competition.
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
