Jacques Audiard’s French crime musical Emilia Pérez, featuring Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofia Gascón, and Selena Gomez, is tipped to be a contender at the Oscars for several awards, including Best International Feature. After earning much praise for playing an amateur murder detective in the Emmy-nominated series Only Murders in the Building, Selena Gomez’s role in this movie has been highly anticipated.
What is Emilia Pérez about?
Rita Mora Castro (Saldaña) is a talented but overlooked lawyer in Mexico whose life changes overnight when a cartel boss named Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Gascón) hires her to help them covertly undergo gender-affirming surgery. Manitas manages to convince a doctor Rita found by telling him about growing up with gender dysphoria. With the doctor and Rita’s help, Manitas fakes her death and begins a new life as Emilia Pérez. Manitas’ grieving widow, Jessi (Gomez), and two young children are safely sent to Switzerland, and Rita gets a massive payday.
Four years later, Emilia Pérez tracks down Rita in London, hiring her again, this time to reunite her with her children and Jessi and bring them to Mexico. Emilia pretends to be Manitas’ distant relative, and an initially reluctant Jessi and the kids begin warming up to her. She even convinces Rita, now a confidante, to help her start an NGO to right some of the innumerable wrongs she did as Manitas in her former life. As Emilia begins to turn her life around and even find love again, her past catches up with her unexpectedly, threatening to ruin everything.
Is Emilia Pérez on Netflix?
After a limited theatrical release at the start of the month, Emilia Pérez is available to stream on Netflix from November 13, 2024, in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. However, if you live outside these countries, you’ll have to wait a bit longer, as a global release date is yet to be announced.
Emilia Pérez gets divisive reviews from the audience
Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical has been touring the film festival circuit to some rave reviews. It premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and was in the running for the prestigious Palme d’Or, before winning the Jury Prize and a Best Actress award for its female ensemble. Post Cannes, the film has been screened at Telluride, TIFF, Busan International Film Festival, and more recently at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2024, earning huge praise for Saldaña and Gascón’s performances.
One X user wrote after watching the film: “the el mal musical number is the beating heart of [Emilia Peréz]. just thrilling on all technical and performance levels. zoe saldana in a red suit. can’t wait for her to sweep the 2025 award season.”
I remember watching Emlia Pérez at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival and enjoying the drama, particularly the performances by Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofia Gascón. While Saldaña donning a red suit and dancing to “El Mal” is quite the rousing moment, Gascón’s incredible screen presence in the titular role is undeniable. As for Gomez, as a mafia wife, we’ve never seen her do something like this before, and she is good. Another X user wrote that Gomez “deserves an Oscar” for one particularly emotional scene in the film.
Emilia Pérez has also been chosen as France’s official entry for the Oscars in the Best International Feature category. But here’s the thing about musicals; the opinions can often be rather divisive. With the film now available on Netflix, is everyone as enamored by this Spanish-language musical crime drama as the critics? Turns out, it’s a mixed bag.
Two clips, in particular, have been widely part of the audience discourse. The first is the song “La Vaginaplastia,” in which Saldaña’s Rita goes to doctors to inquire about the gender-affirming surgery, and asks about the various procedures that Manitas would need, from vaginoplasty to rhinoplasty and even laryngoplasty. However, the clip has gone viral, as many have found this to be a ridiculous sequence, especially for a film being tipped as an Oscars contender.
One person wrote: “THIS IS NOT A REAL MOVIE F DSHJDSFHDSFHHJDSF”
Another commented: “Once in a while a French dude will make a movie about queer people that people at Cannes will call ‘a life-changing work’ or whatever and then it’s released to general audiences and we all find out it’s some South Park shit.”
Someone else wrote about the “Vaginaplastia” scene, “This is the most blatant example of what makes Emilia Peréz so cringe. But make no mistake, the movie’s problems, as far as perspective and confusing spectacle with empathy, run deep.”
One user simply wrote: “I love it when a movie escapes from the festival bubble and all hell breaks loose.”
Another scene being scrutinized involves Selena Gomez’s Jessi (an American in the film) speaking dialogue that many native Spanish-speaking audiences are not happy with. One viewer angrily wrote: “I’m not gonna mince my words I want everyone involved in this to face some terrible consequences that if I were to detail I’d get [banned] off this site. Both the screenwriters, the casting director and Selena Gomez for thinking this is an acceptable way to speak Spanish.”
Another compared Gomez’s performance to Emilia Clarke’s in Game of Thrones, writing, “Daenerys Targaryen spoke Valyrian like it’s her first language, while Selena Gomez barely manages to string a sentence together in Spanish.”
It remains to be seen whether the above concerns will affect the film’s chances at Oscar nominations. Did you watch Emilia Pérez? What did you think about it?
Published: Nov 16, 2024 09:27 am