Golden Globe winner ‘Emilia Pérez’ a challenging, wild opera

Published: January 7, 2025 | Last Updated on February 24, 2025, 11:03 PM

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The Oscar race is starting to heat up, and after Sunday’s Golden Globes, there’s a new serious contender for Best Picture that has everyone talking, questioning, singing, and even protesting.

It’s “Emilia Pérez,” the French-made, Mexico-set crime epic, tragic romance, absurdist comedy, and yes, musical that won the Golden Globe for Best Picture: Comedy or Musical (beating “Wicked”) and that now has everyone in America asking “huh?” and “wait, who is Emilia Pérez?”

And this isn’t the first time that French writer/director Jacques Audiard’s genre-shredding epic has made waves, either.

The film picked up the Jury Prize for Best Picture at Cannes last year, where it also saw Best Actress awarded to all four of its female leads simultaneously, a groundbreaking move for the ensemble win, but also for Karla Sofia Gascón, who became the first trans woman ever awarded.

So what is it? Why are Hollywood insiders and awards voters heaping praise and accolades onto it, and why are so many other people finding it so controversial, reductive, or even maddening?

Well, let’s start with “what is it?”

Based on Audiard’s own unproduced opera (itself loosely based on a book,) “Emilia Pérez” follows the story of Mexican criminal defense lawyer Rita who is recruited by the head of one of the country’s most dangerous drug cartels to help them transition to a woman.

Granted, that’s essentially just the first act, and from there, things start to spiral pretty quickly into themes of cartel violence and disappearances, love triangles, lies, and impossible questions about what someone will sacrifice for the life they want and how much anyone can ever really change.

And also, there’s a lot of singing and dancing.

There are songs about media sensationalism of the Mexican culture of violence. There are songs about female empowerment and self-actualization. There are songs about institutionalized political corruption. There’s even at least once song about the processes and procedures of gender reassignment surgery itself.

All of which is to say, this is a pretty over-loaded, over-stimulating film that’s not only unafraid to tackle some of the most complex social, political, and personal issues of our time, but that’s openly rushing into those issues head-on.

Whether or not you respond to it, presumably, depends on whether or not you think that it handles any of those subversive topics well, or indeed if you think it has any right to handle them at all.

Again, this is a Mexico-focused movie written, produced, and filmed entirely in France with an ensemble cast of Mexican characters that features only one Mexican-born performer.

So it’s not surprising that many outspoken Mexican critics and cultural figures have derided Audiard’s seeming belief that their country is defined only by violence and corruption, an assumption that’s only strengthened by the director’s admission that he did very little research into Mexican life or culture before writing.

Likewise, the non-Mexican cast has been heavily criticized for what native Mexican Spanish speakers say is a wholly unrealistic and stilted grasp of the Spanish language and Mexican accents and dialects, an element that most American or European audiences would never know.

And then there’s the controversy surrounding the film’s transgender themes.

Some in the LGBTQ+ community have taken issue with the lead character of “Emilia Pérez” herself and with the presentation of a trans character as a liar and a former violent criminal.

But that might be discounting the delicate emotional honesty and complexity that Gascón brings to the role from her own lived experience as a trans woman, and while so much of the film is over-the-top and exaggerated, the character’s transition never feels disrespectful or played for laughs or degradation.

So much of that is a testament to Gascón’s fantastic, infinitely layered performance, and the same can be said of pop star turned acclaimed actress Selena Gomez as Pérez’s spiraling, conflicted one-time wife.

The majority of praise, however, should be reserved for lead Zoe Saldaña, who once again makes a case for being among the best and most fearless, confident performers of her generation.

Saldaña’s impressive voice and dance capabilities – and the shockingly creative choreography that she nails throughout – are enough to keep you instantly engaged through any of the musical numbers, no matter how odd or jarring they at first seem.

Ultimately, this is just a wild and even dramatically absurd film that swings for the fences and aims squarely at the most complex and challenging and controversial issues of the modern world, and does it all through intensely stylized and exaggerated song and dance.

Which is to say that – perhaps more than any other modern film or dramatic project in recent memory – this is opera.

In fact, there’s a remarkable amount of conceptual overlap with the legendary opera “Carmen,” even down to its French creator’s arguably problematic impressions of the untethered passion inherent in Hispanic culture.

Everything here, from the street scene ensemble opening number to the gangland setting, the sensuality, the violence, the heightened, melodramatic love, and even to the fiery, passionately explosive finale all feels like an attempt to examine the modern world through the singular lens of classical opera.

It’s not really like any other movie in recent memory. It’s unique, strange, mysterious, and sometimes even compellingly cringe-inducing, but it’s always engaging and always openly, defiantly challenging.

And for that, at least, it really needs to be seen to be believed.

“Emilia Pérez” is streaming on Netflix now with a wide theatrical release in OKC theaters expected following the announcement of this year’s Academy Award nominations.

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Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

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