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What's wrong with EMILIA PÉREZ? | A theatre critic's review of why the 2024 film fails as a musical
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Mickey Jo
10 Golden Globe nominations, 11 BAFTA nominations, three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and 13 Academy Award nominations. Huh? Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and if you are meeting me for the first time, I am a professional theatre critic here on social media. But today we are going to be talking about a film, one of this year's most award nominated new films, emilia Perez, a 2024 piece of cinema which has been met with both critical acclaim and a reasonable amount of controversy. Controversy both because of its themes and because of recent revelations about some of its cast members. Which is not what we're going to be talking about today. Today, what I would like to talk about is how this works or doesn't work as a musical. The because I enjoy cinema and I enjoy film, but I am not a professional film critic and I do not claim to be. I talked a lot about the Wicked movie when that was released because of its crossover with the world of musical theater. Of course, it was based on the hugely successful Broadway musical. Amelia Perez is an original musical film that does not have its basis in a stage production. Of course, if you've seen it yourself, then you likely already figured that much out. But with Amelia Perez largely pulling ahead of Wicked in awards season, I was hugely curious about this film and you know, having heard a lot of things about it, I wanted to make up my own mind. So earlier this week I sat down to watch it so that you wouldn't have to. And in this full review, we're going to be talking through the plot, the performances, the songs. Oh, the songs, and where this sits within the ever complex and fragile world of movie musicals. If you enjoyed this review, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel or follow me on podcast platforms so you don't miss any of my upcoming coverage. And while we're here, let me know if there's anything else adjacent to the world of theatre that you would like to see or hear me review. Finally, as always, make sure to comment down below with your own thoughts. Have you seen the film Amelia Perez? Did you enjoy it? What did you think about it? What did you think of the music? Let us all know your thoughts in the comments section down below. In the meantime, here are some of mine. So for those of you who know nothing about this film, I am going to give you some spoilers in the next section as we talk through the plot. So Amelia Perez, the titular character, is not our main protagonist. Our main protagonist is A lawyer working in Mexico City. Her name is Rita Maoricastro. She's played by Zoe Saldana. And when we first meet her, she is kind of in the process of, against her own better judgment, trying to put together a case to defend a man who she believes is guilty of having murdered his wife. But through a little bit of heavy handed exposition, it's explained to us that she is this incredibly brilliant legal mind. And so she is able to put together this argument, playing on the passions of the nation and its troubles and its challenges and just really contorting the of what happened, to convince a jury of his innocence. In the wake of this legal success, she is contacted by a mysterious anonymous voice who asks her to meet late at night at a random location on the side of the street. And her being a brilliant legal mind, she agrees to this and makes absolutely no plans to, you know, ensure her own protection. I will say as well, before we venture past this section, it's made very clear to us that she is not content with her current professional situation. And she's a defense attorney, but she's not making great money. There is a lyric at one point where she seems to imply that her lack of professional success can be attributed to the color of her skin, that she is struggling as a black woman. And while I don't think it would be any more lucrative for her to do so, you do sort of wonder why she isn't looking into being a prosecuting attorney. Actually, you know, putting the bad wife, murdering men away in jail. Like, it sort of seems like she's chosen this path. But it's also possible that my legal expertise, largely taken from episodes of the Good Wife, isn't necessarily all encompassing. We're going to move on. So she gets abducted by the cartel kingpin known as Manitas. He is the head of a very extensive operation and he reveals to her privately that he desires to fully undergo gender reassignment surgery and live a fulfilling new life as a woman, and has an extraordinary amount of money that can go towards making this happen, and would need the help of her as a lawyer to go out and find the best and safest and most private way for this to be done, as well as to relocate and take care of surviving family members, Manetas wife and two young children who are going to believe that he has died because he's planning to fake his own death. Rita, having been offered both an extraordinary sum of money and a very breathy song in exchange for her cooperation, agrees to do this and travels around the world finding out the Best way for this to happen meets with a doctor who is critical of this, though presumably is a doctor who performs gender reassignment surgery, but seems to reject the idea that it is, you know, at all viable. But the fears that he may have that his entire profession is basically not functional seem to be assuaged when he is also kidnapped by Manitas and taken to a secret location and presumably hears a reprise of the breathy song. We don't get to see that bit. So Rita puts everything in place. Manetas family is relocated. Manetas fakes his own death and then goes to begin a new life as Emilia Perez. We then travel four years into the future where Amelia surprises Rita in London. Rita doesn't recognize her immediately, but the two then discuss why it is that Amelia has sought her out. And Amelia longs to be reunited with her two children and by extension, her wife Jesse, who believes her to be dead. Rita facilitates the relocation of these three family members from Switzerland, where she has helped them go back to Mexico, where they are going to live with Emilia. Amelia, who is now living a very fulfilling and satisfying crime free life. But during this time, while having lunch with Rita, they notice a woman handing out flyers looking for her missing son. And this triggers in the two of them, but particularly in Amelia, the drive to do something meaningful and helpful. It's at this point that she turns entirely into Evita, another figure who was, you know, not uncontroversial, but sang better songs. And so Amelia, with Rita by her side, launches this movement, launches this huge campaign, films an ad for it as well, marching through the streets and, you know, demanding that they are going to find all of the various missing people addressing a huge human trafficking issue in Mexico. And everything is going very well. Everything is going great, even for Jesse, who initially wasn't thrilled about feeling like a trapped prisoner in a gilded cage, having to relocate first to Switzerland and then back to Mexico to live with Emilia Perez, this woman who she doesn't know, who she believes to be a cousin of Manitas, who she doesn't recognize. But it's all good because she reconnects with a man that she used to have an affair with a bunch of years ago. The problem comes when she plans to marry him and relocate with the two children. Amelia has really connected with the children and is, you know, entirely indifferent to the idea of them being taken away from there. There is yet another abduction, there is a whole shootout. It all goes very Tarantino and an end that suggests what might have happened in the Italian Job if Gravity hadn't been on their side. And I don't hate this plot on the face of it, but there are contextual issues that we need to address. Tonally, it feels like a contemporary queer Tarantino in many ways. The film has been written and directed by Jacques Odillard. It is loosely based on a chapter of a novel called Ecut, written by Boris Raison. And while I absolutely welcome a film centered around the trans experience that looks to explore the euphoria of transition and, you know, the fulfillment and the joy that comes with that, a film that seems to want to talk about aspiration and longing, While I celebrate that in principle, I think it's a. A little premature to then be taking that and going, but what if we beyond that and through that featured a trans character who was deeply flawed? I'm like, okay, I celebrate the authenticity. Getting a little bit nervous in the current climate for the trans community, that that should be what we're focusing on when there's still not that much representation on film. But where we really overshoot the landing of brutal honesty is to feature a character who is not only complicated and human and, you know, makes mistakes, but has been responsible for an extraordinary amount of death and who surrounds themselves with women in the film whose lives she controls, whose lives she insists on controlling, using money and aggression and influence and dominance. This is a character who speaks initially about dysphoric struggle, but lacks a certain amount of depth and integrity. And, you know, even when she pivots to this operation to try and connect family members to their loved ones who have been abducted, who have been killed, it doesn't seem to be for honest reasons like she says that it is. But there's so little awareness of her own involvement in all of the crime which has taken place previously to her new life. And that's not in the actions. It's really in the delivery and the writing around that moment, because it doesn't feel in any way linked to remorse. It feels more linked to self importance. It's like, I was doing that then and I'm going to do that now. This is my new decision. It doesn't come from a place of regret and genuine repentance. Then you have Zoe Saldana's character, and we. We get to find out a little bit about her. We find out that she has moral integrity, both at the beginning, when she doesn't want to be defending the man who she is defending, and then later as well, when their noble and good cause brings them to a dinner with a lot of wealthy donors and a lot of important people. And she sings a song as she dances around tables and sings about the hypocrisy of that moment and how a lot of these people are all corrupt and all part of the problem in the country. But beyond these moral ideas, we don't get to find out an awful lot about her. She sings something of an I want song towards the beginning of the film that you really have to pay attention to the lyrics to with the subtitles on screen, because if you blink for just a second, it feels like she's basically saying, I want to have kids, but my arse is too big. I promise you. I'm quoting. And she ultimately ends up entirely in the orbit of Amelia and centering her entire life around her at the same time. It is a compelling thriller. Where we have issues is in the context, like I was saying, because from what I understand, this is not a particularly authentic representation of Mexican culture. For one thing, it is a Spanish language French film. And for another, the casting does not seem particularly inclusive of Mexican native Spanish speakers, opting instead for high profile names who I have read anecdotally deliver the language in a way that feels unusual, in a way that either feels very disjointed or has an unusual cadence. Obviously, I am not a Spanish speaker, nor am I Mexican, so I'm not really able to speak on that. Where I have a bigger personal issue is with this as a queer story, because as I was alluding to before, this is not good trans representation. And that conversation could probably be a video essay entirely of its own. There is so much that we can say about what this gets wrong. It really begins with Zoe Saldana heading around the world and singing a song with these doctors about the process of gender reassignment surgery, where they're just calling out all of these different medical procedures and she is almost orgasmically replying, yes, yes, yes. Like it's some crazed cross between a Herbal Essences shampoo ad and the song from Next to Normal where they sing about all the different drugs. The only problem is, and we are going to get onto this, and I'm getting ahead of myself, that that is satire and this is trying to be, but it's so wildly missing the mark. It just comes off as offensive and reductive of the process of gender reassignment, especially in the face of the meaningful songs that they are trying to write about what this means to Amelia. We get so far away from that when we go to this ridiculous place and you can have a trans character who is flawed and who has made mistakes and who continues to make mistakes because the trans community is not a monolith and doesn't just have to be represented in. In one consistent way. I just don't think we are ready for that yet as a society, because society globally is so ready to vilify trans people. I think that makes this narrative wildly irresponsible in the current climate. I will say I celebrate the authenticity within the casting. I love that we are casting trans women to play trans women on screen. I've spoken before about how very important that is and the connection that that has to violence against trans women when it is not done correctly. It is wildly unfortunate that that particular trans woman in this instance has emerged to have made a series of controversial and racist tweets back in the day. That just sucks. I also don't love the extent to which the plot revolves around the ability to recognize or not recognize Amelia thereafter. I think that also plays into harmful tropes. But to give the film a little bit of credit, there are also a lot of other terrible trans tropes that we have consistently seen in media that this steers clear of. So, I don't know. I go back and forward between thinking that there were good intentions behind this and thinking that they were just kind of using this story in a way to try and be a little emotionally manipulative. It's difficult to discern how much sincerity there was in wanting to tell this story because it doesn't come across. But like I said, what I really want to talk about is the songs here, because, my God, these songs. I could get on board with this as a film. And there are creative things to celebrate about this, the cinematography being one of them. I think it looks great. I think even these musical numbers look pretty decent. I think the lighting of some of these moments, the moment where at a crowded dinner table, Rita recognizes Amelia again, and the lights suddenly focus in on them and darkness falls around them because as far as they're concerned, everyone else has disappeared and nothing else matters. And they can't perceive this anymore because they're so locked in to this suddenly very intense moment. That is great. The lighting there is stunning. The way it's shot is great. Unfortunately, the song they sing immediately is such utter garbage. Not a description I use lightly. These songs are wildly terrible. And before we even get into how bad the songs are, this fails the first dramaturgical test of being a musical, which is, why are we singing? Why are we singing? And I know that's something that people say about a lot of Musicals. But there are reasons, whether it's heightened reality, whether it's a natural and inherent relationship with music, whether it's an extraordinary amount of passion. There has to be some explanation of why we are singing. And it could almost work here if it was just the way that Rita, Zoe Saldana's leading character, saw the world. Because a lot of the singing at the beginning comes from her perspective. She sings, and then she meets with Amelia. Amelia sings. It's when Selena Gomez then sings later on that we really lose any connection to why we are singing in the first place. I don't think this film needed music whatsoever. I think it adds absolutely nothing. I don't think these lyricists understand how to advance the plot using song. We settle down into these moments for the most part, and we just stay there. One of the most egregious lyrics is that moment I was telling you about. They're at the dinner table, they've reconnected. Amelia has found Rita. Rita has suddenly realized it's Amelia she's talking to. And the lyric that they keep repeating is, Rita sings to her, you didn't come here by chance. Tell me you didn't come here by chance. And Amelia will reply something to the effect of, no, I didn't come here by chance. How could I have come here by chance? Of course, you know I didn't come here by chance. And I am screaming. I am screaming because we've just said the same thing five times. And you can do that in a musical if you want to be playful or juvenile. Off the top of my head, if you're Lin Manuel Miranda writing, what the heck I gotta do to be with you? What the heck I gotta do to be with you? Like, if you want to repeat for some kind of a reason. But in this moment, there is so much for them to say to each other. And that is the least interesting thing for them to fixate on five times in a row. You say it once, and we understand where we are. You don't have to keep restating it. Stylistically, the music is contemporary. I'm going to call it Post Hamilton, because there is a lot of rap in this as well. I think that's some of the most impactful music. Actually, I think the best moment musically is the one where Rita is denouncing all of the wealthy individuals who are all involved in some way in the problems faced by the people of Mexico, in the human trafficking, in corruption. And I think that's probably the best of a bad bunch of songs. There is no emerging melody Here whatsoever. None of these songs even connect enough in the first instance to then become memorable subsequently. The lyrics are still pretty atrocious and they're still wildly repetitive. She's still singing some sort of a refrain, like, these people talk, they talk. But now they're going to have to pay. Yes, they're going to pay. Like, again, repeating these ideas. And I appreciate that translating any foreign language lyrics into English always loses a certain quantity of their grace and of their poetry, but it's repetitive regardless. And if we compare this for just a moment with the lyrics of a song from Wicked, another movie musical of the same year, and we take one of the songs from that, something introspective, I don't know, I'm not that Girl. And we think about a lyric from that, like, every so often we long to steal to the land of what might have been. But that doesn't soften the ache that we feel when reality sets back in. Not only is that a lyric that is rhyming in three different places, but it is delivering an idea with nuance and with depth and with feeling. There is emotion in it, rather than like, look at this man. He pretends to be nice, but he's really evil. I hate them all. I'm dancing on a table and they're going to pay. Golden Globe win. What is going on? Then you have a love song that comes between Amelia and a woman who she meets when she is going to find out about what's happened to her abusive husband, who Amelia tells her is dead. The woman's very relieved and they then find an attraction to each other and they pursue a romantic relationship. It's very like late stage color Purple. And where in colour Purple, you have the beautiful song what About Love? Here they sing a song simply called Love, where the choral lyric riffs around the idea of simply saying, amelia, Amelia. Love, Happiness. Finally, love, Amelia. Yay, Amelia, Amelia. Epiphany. Amelia in love. Emilia. And then maybe the most egregious, the song, all about the gender reassignment surgery process. You may have seen this one already on social media. It's the one where she's like, it's very nice to meet you. I'd like to know about sex change. Upper ration. Icy, icy, icy. In this one, I can say with certainty that the lyrics are absolutely dreadful because they're in English and they manage to be reductive, offensive and basic all at the same time. And like I said, I do think it's trying to satirize the process and to satirize plastic surgery. But it does wildly fly in the face of the thing you've just spoken about with Amelia, talking about how important this is to her. It's the thing that seems to contradict the notion that there was any kind of sincere belief that this was an important and meaningful story to tell for the trans community, because it just makes the whole thing a stupid joke and it lacks the wit to be good satire. It doesn't land right. It's punching down in a very strange way. And like with most things, it's about context. And if this were to just be a song about plastic surgery and procedures and augmentations, and you had these different women in hospital gowns being spun around on gurneys by dancing medical professionals just singing about those things outside of the context of gender reassignment, then I think it would play very differently. And that would probably be a way better way to go about this in terms of a narrative. If she was to first seek out doctors talking about breast augmentations and talking about nose jobs and talking about the other cosmetic elements of it, and then she's like, spiraling and circling in on the people, talking about gender confirming procedures and care and doing so in a way that could then have more sincerity. But when she finally meets the latest doctor, he's so against the whole thing for baffling, poorly articulated reasons that it's just. It's just all strange. Now, I do want to talk a little bit about the performances. I'm not wildly impressed with Selena Gomez's performance in this, but I think it's a very difficult character. I think she's inherently miscast in it because she just always seems too young. And she's playing a young woman who was kind of groomed by Manetas, by this cartel leader, and then married him at a very young age. But we see very little growth for her over the course of the film. And she at all times just feels like a young girl, just like wanting to be with a hot guy, with little concern for the fact that she is a mother and a parent and a widow. Her feelings towards her late husband are also wildly inconsistent. The two emerging performances, as has been much discussed, are those of Carlos Sofia Gascon and Zoe Saldana. And they are both giving strong performances in this film, particularly Zoe Saldana. We've seen before on screen that she can dance. This is not a surprise. If you watched the Nicholas Heitner directed film Center Stage, you know all about that already. She has legitimate dance training, and that is what sells a lot of her musical numbers. When she disappears into this fantasy world and she is dancing around all these people and she's getting up on the table. It's her physicality and it's the dance that really lands this. It's also when it's rapping, it's decent enough. She'd be a half decent Angelica Schuyler in a Hamilton film adaptation. But the problem that both of them have is their characters just don't have enough depth. Amelia's character has no rear view mirror whatsoever. There is no sense of remorse. And this has been spoken about as a film that is about aspiration and regret. She only has aspiration. She seemingly has no regret whatsoever. And Rita's character, meanwhile, has no personal stakes in any of it. She just sings about her moral convictions. The disappointing cherry on top of all of this being that the songs are so, so bad. And this is what really frustrates me when it comes to musicals on film. When it comes to the world of movie musicals, which really ebb and flow in terms of their critical and commercial success, there have been Academy Award winning movie musicals in the past. When we look back to and celebrate the golden age of cinema, it involves dance, it involves song. When you think about classic old Hollywood, that's what you think about. Hugely respected are the Fred Astaires and Ginger Rogers's of this world. So why now do we look on movie musicals with disdain? Why now do we seek to trivialize them as something commercial? Why is something like Wicked, that did such a meaningful and nuanced and artistic job and handled this material with such care and infused it with greater meaning, greater depth than the stage production, largely because it had the time to do so, because it split them into the two films? Why is that looked at? Just because it made a lot of money? Just because it was very popular, pardon the pun. Why is that inherently not artistic enough to win the Academy Award? Why is something like Emilia Perez? Because it's darker, because it's grittier, because it's artsier, whatever that might mean, it is barely functional as a musical. It does not stand up to any level of dramaturgical scrutiny. Within that context, it is full of dreadfully written songs. But because it has a more artistic vibe, because it feels more like an indie film, for some reason it's having more critical success. And I know it just sounds like I'm Team Wicked here and like I'm butt hurt about the fact that it's not getting the same kind of love from the world of awards. I was never expecting that for Wicked. What I resent is something like this that has such problems being called a piece of art because it's bold and because it's striking, but for some reason not being critically scrutinized for the sum of its parts, which I'm here to tell you are not great. Anyway, those have been my thoughts about Emilia Perez. As always, I would love to know what you think in the comments section down below, particularly if anyone watching this is a native Spanish speaker, let us know what you thought of the lyrics and if anyone loved this film. If anyone has wildly positive things to say about it, please let us know about those in the comments section as well. Please help me understand what I am missing with this film. In the meantime, I will be here on social media talking about all of the theatre productions that I go and see and of course waiting to see when we are going to hear more About Wicked Part 2 coming later this year. In the meantime, I will be here on social media talking about the shows that I see on stage as well as any other theatrically related films coming soon. Make sure you're subscribed right here on YouTube or following me on podcast platforms so you don't miss any of that upcoming content and I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a Stagey Day. For 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey day. Subscribe.