Emilia Pérez (American premiere in the presence of Jacques Audiard)

Jacques Audiard: Emilia Pérez (FR 2024).

Zoe Saldaña, Adriana Paz, Jacques Audiard, Karla Sofia Gascón and Selena Gomez in Telluride. Herzog TFF51-VK. Photo: Vivien Killilea. Photo from the TFF 2024 website.

Viewed at Werner Herzog Theatre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF) 1 Sep 2024.

In person: Jacques Audiard, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña, Adriana Paz.

Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "Rita (Zoe Saldaña), a lawyer with career frustrations, has a fantastically cinematic way of expressing herself: a minute into Jacques Audiard’s film, she explodes eloquently into song. When the entire courtroom starts singing and dancing with her, you know you’re watching something entirely new. Audiard, who wrote the screenplay, initially imagined EMILIA PÉREZ as an opera and everything about it is oversized in the most vital way imaginable. As the film begins, Manitas del Monte is a terrifying drug cartel honcho who offers Rita a fortune if she’ll find the surgeon who’ll help him with a delicate procedure. Jessi (Selena Gomez) is Manitas’ abandoned young wife; Epifania (Adriana Paz), a victim of drug cartel violence, is Emilia’s new love; and Karla Sofía Gascón makes an unforgettable impression. The actresses shared the best actress award at Cannes, and Audiard regular Édgar Ramírez also appears in a small but important role." –Larry Gross (France, 2024, 132 min)

AA: Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez is big and bold and transgressive - also transcending the director's own boundaries. The protagonist experiences a sex change. It's in Spanish. It's an opera. It is perfectly ok for an opera film to be operatic. But loud voices, strong colours and shock value can turn tiresome. Audiard demonstrates convincingly that he can do something completely different, but an irresistible inner drive is missing.