Emilia Pérez, the not-so-quiet musical, has quickly become this year’s Oscar darling over awards season, racking up 13 Academy Award nominations, three more than any other film. It is one of the more divisive Best Picture nominations in recent memory. Critics like it but don’t love it, as evidenced by its 75% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and 71 on Metacritic. Those scores alone suggest it’s one of the year’s better movies, but it is far from a consensus. Worse are the audience scores, with a meager 27% fresh Rotten Tomatoes audience score and 6.2 on IMDB. Some are comparing its surge to Crash (2004) and Green Book (2018), two great films that may have earned their Best Picture Academy Award wins, based more on where we were in American society during those periods than on the timeless quality of the movie itself. While that is not something I would say, I would agree that neither film was the best of those years. I have Crash as my sixth favorite and Green Book as my third favorite movie of the year. Similarly, Emilia Pérez is not the best movie of 2024, but it will finish in my top ten. Like those above, it’s not perfect, and its timely, topical relevance is a factor of its generated steam.

I went into my initial viewing of Jacques Audiard’s (The Sisters Brothers, Rust and Bone) Spanish-subtitled film blind. I knew nothing. When I realized the film was a musical, I gave it 15 minutes before tapping out. I wasn’t prepared for my watch, knew anything about the story, or had any interest in continuing once one of the main characters started singing and dancing. I would not have given the film another chance if it had not earned its Oscar nomination claim. Had I not, I would have missed this very good film. I am hesitant to call Emilia Pérez great. Buried is a great movie that tries to burst through the seams of someone who wants to do too much.

Aside from Crash and Green Book, several other movies have been extremely timely and relevant when released. Examples are movies such as Moonlight, CODA, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. Each won Best Picture at the Oscars. Moonlight is a fantastic film, and while they weren’t for me, I can see why others thought CODA and Everything Everywhere All At Once were excellent films. The Social Network is another example. It felt criminal that The King’s Speech defeated The Social Network for Best Picture of 2010. Both films finished in my Top Ten of 2010, which I’ve said many times has been the best year of my lifetime. The Social Network was timely, relevant, and perfect, whereas The King’s Speech was about a 1900s England King with a lisp. With everything else equal, it felt wrong that The Social Network did not win.

Karla Sofía Gascón (The Noble Family), a Spanish trans actress who found success in Mexican films and soap operas before her gender transition, stars in Emilia Pérez, portraying dual roles: first as Manitas Del Monte, a notorious drug lord struggling with gender dysphoria, and later as Emilia Pérez, a philanthropist dedicated to helping families find their missing loved ones through her nonprofit organization.

To disappear and complete her gender transition, Manitas needs an insider, someone with intelligence, contacts, and the means to help fake Manitas’s death, sneak them out of the country, and find a doctor to complete the gender transition surgery. Rita (Zoe Saldana – Avengers: Infinity War, Live by Night) becomes involved. Rita is a defense attorney, helping those she knows are guilty of heinous crimes escape guilty sentences. Rita has dreams of using her law degree to give back to her community rather than using her skills to compete with her principles directly. Manitas enlists Rita to help with what Manita’s needs, offering all of the money she will ever need to start and maintain a nonprofit to achieve her vocational goals.

Manitas has two young children with wife Jessi (Selena Gomez – Spring Breakers, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising). Manitas gives this all up, only to realize years later that, despite what he thought, he missed his children and wanted them to become part of their lives again. He has Rita bring the family back to Mexico from Switzerland, where Manitas moved to keep them safe. Emilia then connects with Jessi, saying that he is Manitas’s cousin. From here, the story shifts to Emilia, portraying the cousin to reacquaint with his kids. Though neither knows Emilia is their parent, both sides are content with the brewing relationship until it reaches a tipping point.

The film focuses on several important themes. These include identity, transformation, representation, redemption, and atonement. Manitas wants to atone for the ruthless kingpin Manitas had become during her defining years before the audience is introduced to her. While this is notable, admirable, and a wish of many (most?) of us for some of our most regrettable sins, especially when they come at the expense of others, we don’t see the cruelty or brutality she inflicted. We can only rely upon our preexisting knowledge of Mexican drug cartels. We are conditioned to believe that Manitas is a vile human being capable of inhumane acts. However, we know Manitas as someone who wants to disappear from that lifestyle and transition into who Manitas wants to be. That’s all to say that we never meet an unlikable Manitas. Of course, that is an intentional move with Audiard’s direction, but it comes at the expense of us rooting for Emilia because we didn’t know enough about her backstory. Another examined theme is that even if we can alter our physical appearances to be unrecognizable, can that be enough to change who we are, especially from an intellectual and behavioral perspective?

It was difficult to suspend my belief that Jessi did not know Emila was her husband. While the great majority of us won’t have a spouse who experiences gender dysphoria and far fewer who go through gender transformation, would not all of us recognize our spouses? While a person’s physical appearance and voice can change, would there not be inherent behaviors, such as touch, phrases they might use, or how they might respond to a particular action be the same or, worse, similar? Yes, Jessi believes that Manitas is dead. However, in Manitas’s world of crime, deceit, and influence, could there not be doubt that he was still alive, especially if there was no dead body? The more time Emilia and Jessi spent together, the more difficult it became to believe that she couldn’t see that Manitas and Emilia were the same person.

Had Emilia Pérez not earned a nomination for Best Picture, I am confident I would not have given it a second chance. I wasn’t prepared for a musical. Interestingly, when I gave it a complete watch, I was keenly aware that it was a musical while wondering whether that style was more or less effective, given the film’s actors and the story’s characters. Are 13 Academy Award nominations too many for this movie? Probably. This is especially true with such a polarizing film. Still, the same could be said about any movie earning that many nominations, mainly when the industry produces films more than ever. There are always deserving movies that get shut out. Part of me wants to say that I want to spread the wealth. At the same time, I don’t want that to come at the expense of something more deserving. I agree with a number of the movie content creators that I follow who said that Emilia Pérez is a good film, but not one that is so much better than others this year that it warranted all of the acclaim. I recommend watching it if the story sounds interesting, you enjoy musicals, or are fascinated by topical films, rather than watching only because it has received so much fanfare.

Plot 8.75/10
Character Development 9.25/10
Character Chemistry 9.5/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 10/10
Hook and Reel 8.5/10
Universal Relevance 9.5/10
92%

A-

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• I Saw The TV Glow
• Moulin Rouge!
• The Greatest Showman
• tick tick Boom
• Dancer in the Dark