Emilia Perez (2024)

Rated R and a pretty solid R all around.  While the movie is pretty open and honest about the entire experience of what it is like being a transgender woman in Mexico, including transition, the movie's real moral core struggles from a protagonist who is a drug lord who does horrible things.  There is violence, including domestic violence, coupled with scenes of gore.  There is also sexual scenes, but nothing shown on camera. The weirdest thing in the movie is the borderline blasphemous imagery as the movie ends.  And as always, there's some language.

DIRECTOR: Jacques Audiard

I'm screwing up every bit of my routine to make everything happen.  Here's the deal.  If I get through my To-Do list for today, it will be a minor miracle.  Normally, I deprioritize blogs when I have other things to do.  But I also have guaranteed Internet right now, so I'm going to see if I can knock this out before the world catches up with me and no internet.  Also, I'm incredibly frustrated trying to find an image that is representative of the main characters of the film while still looking pretty cool.  The eponymous woman is in the foreground, but she's blurred out.  Any other images with her are pretty meh, so I had to make a choice.  Oh, or they're AVIF files and I can't do anything with those.

Do you know how much I wanted to like this movie?  I don't know if I am ready to take the plunge and just purge social media, especially considering that social media is the only way that I get eyes on what I write.  I took the leap from X when Elon took the whole thing incredibly right wing and now that Zuck is starting to do the same, I guess I have to figure out new outlets.  And in the same way that I want to like Bluesky, I also wanted to like this movie.  (See, I can focus!)  Because the world is a terrible place, I kept seeing memes about how it was insane that Emilia Perez beat Wicked for Musical at the Golden Globes.  Now, the scene that all the trolls kept on pushing was one of the few English language songs in the movie, which is a doctor walking Rita through the transition process, but using colloquial language to explain the process.  All of the comments defending the scene said that the scene was silly in isolation, but a powerhouse in context.  If that defense was true of the scene, I got incredibly jazzed.  It felt like Emilia Perez was going to be this nuanced story where the music was an alternative to big budget flashy musicals.  And to a certain extent, my theory was right.  The music is certainly an alternative to what we get in big-budget musicals.  The problem with that is...

...it also isn't good.  Oh, and I was way off on the "subtle" bit.  The movie doesn't want the viewer to interpret a darn thing.  It is a sledgehammer of intent with --and I hate to say this --an awful soundtrack.  Now, I'm going to backpedal that almost immediately.  I'm not the best guy to be talking about music.  Heck, even though I'm literally wearing a necktie with the name of a bunch of musicals on it, I probably even can't comment on what musicals are fantastic.  I like what I like and I've always been in that camp, especially when it comes to music.  But if we're talking about music in a musical here, which I admit isn't even mostly in my own language, the lyrics in these songs seem to lack any kind of artistry to them.  This is way too rough of me to say, but it feels like the stuff that I wrote in high school.  It's so on-the-nose message wise. What I'm about to write aren't lyrics to the actual songs (although I do realize it is completely in my power and skill set to just Google lyrics), but the lyrics to Emilia Perez are like the following.  Rita and Emilia walk pass a homeless person (this does not happen in the movie.  Again, just an example.)  The two of them sing lyrics like, "Look, a homeless person!  How did you become homeless?  Is it the fault of a system of economics that discourages humanity?  I want to give you humanity!  The government is wrong for letting you suffer!"  And it is a lot of that.  I mean, song after song, there is nothing left for interpretation.  We gain nothing from listening / reading these lyrics.  If anything, Emilia Perez doesn't want to let you question any part of this movie.

I will say that the final third of the movie made me not hate it though.  I'm a progressive butthead living in a world of conservative monsters.  (See, I don't have to write subtlety either.) I want to support my transgender brothers and sisters in whatever they are going through.  But the message in the first two thirds of the movie is really weird.  And it's not that the story can't be told.  The problem is that the story can't be told the way that it is told.  I want to unpack the first two thirds of the film and tell you what completely crapped the bed, then follow it up with the final third that gives me a little bit of peace.  I hate to be summarizing so much of the movie, but that summary is also going to reveal where the movie falls apart.  The movie surrounds Rita, a lawyer, who is tasked with helping Manitas, a real monster of a drug lord, transition into being a woman.  She takes the job reluctantly because she had a big loss recently and I assume needs the money.  Also, she has a bag put over her head and forced to do it.  Manitas is not a good dude.  Once Rita gets Manitas the surgery she needs, Manitas names herself Emilia and disappears for four years.  Four year time jump in the plot, Emilia confronts Rita and wants to hire her once more to help her with charity work.  A lot of the movie is Emilia trying to undo the sins of her past by being altruistic.  Now, the problem lies in the time jump.  When we have a time jump like that, where a character goes from being a monster to being a saint, the read on the story is that transgender surgery makes someone a better person.  I certainly hope that the movie isn't trying to sell that.  Maybe, and this is a stretch of the imagination, the movie might be trying to sell the notion that denying one's true identity can lead to monstrous behavior.  It may tie into the notion that there are violent expectations put on men that women don't necessarily have.  What I think that the movie wants to say, especially if the four year time jump was removed, is that a fresh start gives people the opportunity to reflect on their mistakes and try to correct them.  But the four year time jump destroys that message.

If the four years was reinserted back into the narrative, we'd have those epiphany moments.  We don't want to miss Ebenezer Scrooge coming to terms with his past and just being a better person because he was scared by a ghost.  No, Emilia needs to understand that what Manitas did was awful and learn the damage that Manitas caused.  There needs to be a struggle to understand that Manitas caused people pain in real ways, leading to Emilia trying to get all of these charities up and running to stop others from doing what Manitas did.  That's a story.  But the four year time jump ruins a lot of that.  I want to watch the four years, not what I got afterwards.  

But I told you that the final third ain't bad.  That's kind of true.  I mean, it's not good either.  By the time the movie was over, I was thankful that I didn't have to watch any more.  You know that I'm pretty frustrated with a movie when I realize that there are ten minutes of translation credits on Netflix and that the film is shorter than I was prepped for.  But the final third is better.  Emilia (and this is pretty gross) decides to Mrs. Doubtfire her old family.  I get it.  She misses her kids.  She doesn't hate her wife (ex-wife?).  But also, you can't lie to these people and still be a good person.  Anyway, she Mrs. Doubtfires her family.  She is even mildly supportive to find out that Jessi, her wife, has moved on from Manitas's death.  She doesn't like the guy, which is understandable because he is also a drug lord.  But the reveal of Emilia being Manitas was a chef's kiss moment.  It had to be the part that the movie most desperately needed.  When we have the needle drop (which, by the way, makes Jessi a little more dumb than she needs to be because she is given so much information that Emilia is Manitas before that moment), often that scene makes the liar seem sympathetic.  It's often, "I'm sorry, but I didn't think you would accept me if you knew who I really was."  None of that here.  Emilia shows us Manitas, violence and all, in that sequence.  There's nothing sympathetic about the reveal.  If anything, it makes it looks like the choice to be Emilia was a means to run away from truths instead of actually getting therapy or dealing with the consequences of being an abusive drug lord.  That is way more heady than anything else that the movie gave us.  Yeah, the movie ends with Emilia still being mildly sympathetic, especially as Jessi comes to terms with  the reality of Manitas and what Jessi is doing to Emilia.  But the movie also wants its cake and eat it too.  Like, Emilia comes across as a bit of a victim by the end of the film as opposed to being someone dealing with the consequences of her actions.  It's a bit of weak tea, but it is at least something that gives the character human traits instead of "Look, everyone!  Change the world with words."

I do want to change the world with words.  I'm a big fan of the message.  But it makes those who want to fight that good fight look like simpletons who act entirely on feelings instead of struggling every day to get the message out there.  It's such a simple look at fighting the good fight that it might be hurting the good fight more than it helps.  It also doesn't help that almost no part of this movie is done in an entertaining way that could sell it to naysayers.  I hate that I'm going to see a scene posted by a bigot who describes progressive entertainment as "woke" and not have  a good response.  The movie is terrible.  Do you know why it is frustrating?  It's the R-Rated God's Not Dead of left leaning beliefs.  It's not a good movie and probably doesn't represent the struggle that a lot of people go through.