At this late date, whatever interesting things Jacques Audiard’s unusual musical has to offer as entertainment have been subsumed by its attendant controversies. But even those interesting things are open to debate, mainly because they rely so heavily on idiosyncrasy for making an impression. The most obvious idiosyncrasy is the almost total lack of sympathetic characters, which shouldn’t necessarily be a handicap, but Emilia Pérez began as an opera, which means it relies on melodramatic devices for its emotional power, and without a countervailing indication of virtuous intentions the dramatic elements feel lopsided. One could argue that Rita (Zoe Saldaña), the lawyer who takes on the task of ushering the titular Mexican drug cartel boss through her sex change and then protecting her new identity as a woman, is the most relatable character in terms of basic human decency, but it requires a leap of faith that Audiard doesn’t justify.

Another idiosyncrasy is that many plot points are patently ridiculous, but only one is treated as such by the musical format, and that’s when Rita goes to Thailand to research sex change surgery options and is met with an elaborate production number featuring wheelchairs and humorous references to genital transformation. Most of the other musical interludes come across as almost serious, though it’s difficult to tell because they offer no memorable melodies or choreography that move the story along. Most are what you would call inner monologues cosplaying as songs. Saldaña is a fine dancer and Selena Gomez, who plays the cartel boss Manitas Del Monte’s Mexican-American wife Jessi, is a bona fide 21st century idol-pop star, so there’s no shortage of talent on display. Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays both Manitas and Emilia, has a roughness of presentation that enlivens both her acting and her singing, but the songs she’s been given don’t add anything to Emilia’s story as a journey of self-discovery. After all, the main purpose of her transition is not so much that she has always wanted to be a woman (though she says so many times) but rather that she wants to put the death and destruction that comes with her vocation behind her. After reemerging as Manitas’s previously unknown cousin, Emilia tries to make up for the misery caused by her former self by establishing a foundation to help the families of her victims reclaim their loved ones’ remains and find closure. But even Rita, who sold her soul to this devil in the first act, has to scoff at the perfidy of such an attempt at redemption, and Audiard engineers a punishment for Manitas/Emilia’s presumptions that is suitably operatic but no less ludicrous. 

In the end, the idiosyncrasy that neutralizes whatever inherent entertainment charms the material offers is the length. Operas and musicals are long because their production numbers require elliptical pauses in the action, but even the plot here feels as if it’s marching at a slower pace than necessary, which means it should have either been a straightforward telenovela without songs, or a ribald musical farce. At first, I concluded that Audiard brought too much to the table, but it’s probably the opposite: He didn’t think it through thoroughly enough. 

The protagonist of the British thriller Femme is not a transsexual, like Emilia Pérez, but rather a part-time transvestite. Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) turns into the glamorous lip-syncing queen Aphrodite on Saturday night, dolled up to the nines and strutting like a monument to outlandishness; and in private with his roommates admits that it’s difficult to tell which persona is the real him and which is an act. This fatal dichotomy becomes word when, still dressed in his stage gear, Jules goes out to buy some cigarettes and is accosted by a bunch of homophobic goons who beat the shit out of him. One of them he recognizes as a guy who’s been hanging outside the club giving him the eye, and following a period of traumatized healing when Jules retreats into himself, he hesitantly ventures out to a sauna where gay cruising takes place and stumbles upon his attacker, who doesn’t recognize him in mufti. Jules comes on to the guy, a drug dealing ex-con named Preston (George McKay), as a means of exacting revenge, though he doesn’t really know what form that revenge will take as he plays the subsequent affair by ear.

The directors, Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, take this premise to its limit, both emotionally and dramatically. Preston’s greatest fear is that his mates will find out about his proclivity for homoerotic sex (Cultivated while in prison? That seems to be the implication), and his attitude toward Jules shifts constantly and often suddenly between violent paranoia and full-on obsession, while Jules, all the while plotting his reprisal, stews in his own fear and, against his better judgment, develops feelings for Preston that are only partly an expression of sympathy for his spiritual dilemma. When Preston takes Jules out on a date he brings him to an expensive restaurant where he tries to show off his epicurean side, which does nothing to counter his boorish self-image as a true lad but rather intensifies, in Jules’ mind, how completely at a loss he is in terms of self-esteem: All that showy macho bluster can’t hide the hatred he feels for himself. 

The story only magnifies the two characters’ slippery purchase on their respective identities even as it charges headlong into conventional thriller territory. If I found the denouement a bit too ambiguous, that’s probably because I, like too many habitual moviegoers, expect something more definite when confronted with certain genre elements, but you couldn’t accuse the filmmakers of being dishonest. 

Emilia Pérez, in Spanish and English, opens March 28 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Marunouchi Piccadilly (050-6875-0075), Bunkamura Le Cinema Shibuya Miyashita (050-6875-5280), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (03-6709-6410), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Femme opens March 28 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Cinema Qualite (03-3352-5645), Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Emilia Pérez home page in Japanese

Femme home page in Japanese

Emilia Pérez photo (c) 2024 Page 114-Why Not Productions-Pathe Films-France 2 Cinema

Femme photo (c) British Broadcasting Corporation and Agile Femme Limited 2022