Showing On 2, 4, 5 June
Monday 6:00pm, Wednesday 4:00pm and 6:30pm, Thursday 6:00pm
Watch The Trailer
Storyline (warning: spoilers)
Emilia Pérez, the latest from 72-year-old director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet), has been hyped since it won the Jury Prize (quasi 3rd place) at the Cannes Film Festival last May. It recently won the Golden Globe for best musical/comedy and was showered with Oscar nominations when released.
There aren’t a lot of songs, but the film is classified as a “musical” and is centred on a powerful Mexican gang leader, Manitas (Gascón). Background details are scant but from what we see in a quick introduction, he’s a much-feared individual with a small army of henchmen who help carry out illegal drug trades and murders.
What happens next is not something I’ve seen in a gangster flick before. Manitas wants “out” of the crime business, and he also wants to fulfill a long-time ambition of having a sex change operation. The plan is to fake his own death, have the required surgery, and begin a completely new life.
We then skip four years ahead where Manitas, now a woman named Emilia Pérez, is happy with life… with one exception. She misses her kids! To fix this issue, she weaves her way back into their world by pretending to be Manitas’s long-lost cousin and moving back in with the family.
It’s a convoluted narrative. Why did Manitas want to live life as a woman and leave the family behind? Was it that easy to fake a death and disappear without a trace? What had Emilia been doing for the last few years? Did no one suspect anything?
Stars Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoe Saldaña deliver credible performances but it’s not enough to overcome the limitations of the screenplay.