Chondrolaryngoplasty?

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2024

#47 Emilia Pérez

Jacques Audiard’s gangster trans musical about a Mexican cartel leader who hires a lawyer to arrange his transition is carried along by its cheesy Broadway energy.

Skipping over Love Lies Bleeding (#49) because we've already seen it and Monster (#48) because The Guardian describes it as "deliberately dense" which I just can't face, brings us to, somewhat surprisingly, our third visit with a Jacques Audiard film. The first one was good and the second one was somewhat pointless, so who knows what we're going to get here? 

Well, actually I've got quite a good idea because there's been a LOT written about it, particularly about how the Mexicans weren't all that impressed with how it depicted their country and how its Oscars campaign was somewhat derailed by some earlier comments made by Karla Sofía Gascón. So I'm intrigued to see what it's like - but I'm not expecting to like it.

The general plot as described by The Guardian above is pretty well known, but it's really only a small part of the story with an awful lot else going on. It's very scattergun in its approach to the story, jumping all over the place - there's a weird tonal shift in the second half to focus on "the disappeared" without any obvious reason for doing so. I'd also say I don't understand a lot of people's motivations throughout the film - a lot of what happens is really rather silly. It has QUITE the melodramatic ending though - it wasn't at all where I was expecting it to go and it was completely over the top, but it seems to fit in reasonably well with all the other nonsense that went on before. However, at 132 minutes, it was far, far too long for something that was so muddled.

It is a musical, but the composition and setting of the songs is very variable - in some cases they're full set pieces with very impressive choreography and in other cases they're kinda last minute additions which don't seem to bear a great deal of relevance to anything. I'd also say that some of the singing is surprisingly bad. 

Considering the actors, we have to start with Karla Sofía Gascón who plays the title role, both before and after surgery. I'm not in the "roles with <X> character trait can only be played by actors with that trait" camp, but I do think it's good to see a trans role taken by a trans actor (although the film didn't escape criticism for its portrayal of trans people). I'd say Karla isn't the best actor ever, but she's perfectly adequate in the "after" section - we'll just skip over the "before" section, because it's just a complete mess (and certainly not Karla's fault). 

Less controversially, Zoe Saldana is very good as Rita, the lawyer who helps Emilia with various things - I'm not 100% convinced she deserved the Oscar, but I don't feel it was a major miscarriage of justice. Selena Gomez is also good as Jessi, Emilia's ex-wife but she's woefully underused. And, despite this film having approximately a million people in it, that's it for the major roles - no-one else appears for more than about ten minutes, I reckon. 

The direction is a lot like the story - inconsistent, but impressive when it clicks. There's also often a lot going on on screen - particularly during some well choreographed music numbers, sometimes so much that I forgot to read the subtitles!

So - let's talk about the controversies. The Mexicans didn't like the lack of Mexicans in the film (which seems fair enough), the drug/gang culture portrayal (I didn't think it was too bad, but I'm guessing they felt they didn't need a Frenchman to lecture them about it) and the use of stereotypes (again, I didn't think it was too bad, but I'm not going to argue with Mexico on this). To Zoe Saldana's credit, she apologised, said it certainly wasn't their intention and was happy to discuss it with all of Mexico to understand the issues better - sometimes you just have to hold your hands up and admit that other people may be right.

Next, the trans community basically just said it was shit on so many fronts - and from my point of view, I think it's best that I just say i have no reason to doubt any of their arguments. I would however like to assure the entire community (because I know they care what I think) that I didn't view the film as an educational experience - I was pretty ignorant beforehand and nothing has changed as a result of watching this. I do however disagree that the film portrays trans women as liars, with the counter-argument that it portrays one trans woman as a liar seeming to be pretty reasonable to me.

The other area of controversy was Karla Sofía Gascón's historical tweets - let's just say the whole episode doesn't cover anyone in glory, but I find it surprising that someone didn't do a better job searching through people's social media history. Who knows exactly what people found most offensive, but it certainly hurt the film's showing at the Academy Awards with its thirteen nominations only resulting in two wins - for Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldana and best Original Song for El Mal, which is an OK song, but filmed in a very effective manner.

Well, I've typed a lot about this film so far without addressing whether I actually liked it or not. Fortunately, that can be sorted out pretty quickly - no, I didn't. It has some impressive cinematic moments and Zoe Saldana is very good, but as a whole package it's confused and overly long, being not nearly as good as it thinks it is. If you fancy it, it's on Netflix - but the Mexican trans community aren't going to thank you for watching it.

#50 - Doesn't stick the landing