Movie Review – ‘Emilia Pérez’ is certainly a musical

Musicals are a trend, and while I don’t mind a good musical, they do have to be good with solid music that moves the plot. While Emilia Pérez (2024) is ambitious in story line, plot, and characterization, it fails in every other aspect that could make it a movie worth recommending.

Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldana) is a talented lawyer boxed into a job that forces her to act against her conscience. Winning a case, she’s approached by the head of a prominent cartel, Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, (Karla Sofía Gascón),  who asks for Rita’s assistance to start a new authentic life as a woman. Years later, Del Monte, now fully Emilia Pérez, misses her kids and in the process of reuniting, begins to make amends for the previous life of murder. It also stirs feelings for her former wife, her wife’s lover, and her future.

Emilia Pérez is described as a French musical crime comedy. It’s a lot to ask for a film based on an opera libretto, which was in turn based on the 2018 novel Écoute by Boris Razon.  That self-published novel has a 2 out of 5 on Goodreads, if that says anything.

It’s completely in French (and Spanish), so enjoy your sung subtitles. It’s a musical and be warned, the songs and dancing are aggressive and incongruous. Lots of thrown elbows with kicks and spins, and the lyrics don’t further the story so much as provide unnecessary insight to the character. The biggest stumbling block of Emilia Pérez is its inability to make the transition from loose novel, to unproduced opera libretto, to musical motion picture. It suffers from its own identity crisis and in turn passes that disassociation to its characters. Rita is unfulfilled but upends her life for money and the opportunity to do good – but mostly for money. Emilia fakes her own death to live her new life but then misses her family. Manitas’ widow Jessi (Selena Gomez) pouts a lot. These all shells of humans that neither the music nor dialog fills to anyone’s satisfaction.

I can only recommend Emilia Pérez to hardcore theater kids. Awkward lyrics shoehorned into jarring music make for a cinematic experience that leaves you lost and confused. I don’t think I ever got to the comedy aspect and maybe that’s a translation issue. It’s crime-light, I guess so you can focus on the music.

Definitely not the best choice.

Emilia Pérez (2024) is rated R for foreign swears, sexytimes, shootings, domestic assault, and car crashes.

Emilia Pérez is in select theaters November 1 and on Netflix November 13