‘Emilia Pérez’ Director on Mashing Up All the Film’s Genres: “How Much Time Do We Have?”
[The story contains spoilers for the new Netflix release Emilia Pérez.]
If you’re hearing about it for the first time, you may find your head spinning at the number of genres invoked by the new Netflix awards hopeful Emilia Pérez. Or, less pithily, “That Spanish-language musical that’s also a family drama that’s also a cartel thriller that’s also a study in Trans identity. From a French auteur. Co-starring Selena Gomez.”
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The French auteur may have been a little daunted by the challenge himself, “How much time do we have?” said Jacques Audiard (A Prophet), when asked after the New York Film Festival premiere Monday night how he set about developing his latest picture.
The queer musical features Trans actress Karla Sofia Gascón playing a male drug kingpin in Mexico who enlists Zoe Salda?a’s lawyer Rita to help him transition to a woman named Emilia Pérez. This sets off a chain of events in which Emilia poses as a distant cousin to work her way back stealthily to her wife (Gomez) and children who think their husband/father is dead — with plenty of meditations on class and violence along the way.
Tastemakers have been singing more praises for the film than its characters do songs. Critically well-regarded at Cannes, where it won the Jury and Actress prizes, the film two weeks ago was also a runner-up for the People’s Choice Award in Toronto.
But it has much bigger designs on its mind, including best picture, sitting in the top echelon of Feinberg Forecast and other pundits’ lists, as it also does for lead and supporting actress. A director prize for Audiard is within reach too, especially given how Academy voters tend to favor auteurs born outside America (they’ve won all but two of the annual prizes since 2010). Watch out for music categories too; French singer Camille wrote the songs while her life and professional partner Clément Ducol composed the score.
The movie has been selected as France’s official submission, giving it an inside track for the international Oscar. Netflix bought North American and U.K. rights at Cannes for release this fall.
The path to the screen wasn’t straightforward. Audiard adapted the screenplay from an opera he wrote based on a novel titled Listen by the French newspaper editor Boris Razon — who only included the Emilia-esque character as a subplot in a very different story.
“It was one chapter in a novel that was not fully developed,” Audiard told festival programmer and New Yorker critic Justin Chang on the NYFF stage. “So I decided to develop it.”
If audiences will be surprised by the mashup, so was at least one of its stars. Gomez said she was terrified auditioning in front of Audiard for the complex part but that the outcome made it worthwhile.
“I don’t know how to explain it but I love real film,” the actress said. “I feel like I’m doing the things I’ve dreamed about since I was a little girl.” Gomez was just nominated for an acting Emmy for her role on Only Murders In the Building and has starred in movies by Harmony Korine and Jim Jarmusch.
You can add another genre to the list too, according to Salda?a: the underdog picture. “The love you feel for characters that are unredeemable,” she said when asked on-stage to describe its appeal. “To give a chance to someone who deserves it.”
Salda?a gave an impassioned speech at the festival premiere — much of it about her co-star. “I got to see this volcanic artist bring together two people at once and I saw this woman dig into the deepest part of herself and then share it with Emilia,” she said of Gascón. “But standing next to that force of nature was sometimes scary,” she added, laughing.
Gascón laughed too. “I have an absolutely wonderful relationship with Zoe,” she said via a translator. “It’s similar to the relationship between Emilia and Rita, which went from fear to love.”
Gascón said she sees the story in stark moral terms. “I do think there is a fight between light and darkness. And this film is bringing so much light into the world.”
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