Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard’s musical thriller

There’s little between the black-and-white tower blocks of Paris’ Les Olympiades district and the DF Towers in Mexico for one of the most accomplished and versatile film-makers of his generation. In this new feature film, Jacques Audiard offers up a fresh take on his earlier work, this time shooting in Spanish and slightly in English, as he did with 2018’s The Sisters Brothers starring Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal and John C. Reilly, with Emilia Pérez nevertheless set in uncharted territory for the director: Latin America.

In telling the tale of cartel king Manitas, who becomes a woman to escape the clutches of fate only to fall into destiny’s trap, Audiard delved into the ultra-violent underworld of Mexico’s narcotics dealers, with a glittering line-up of Hispano-Latino talent backing him up. Spanish trans actress Karla Sofia Gascón plays Emilia Pérez, supported by Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña as the lawyer tasked with changing the course of the drug baron’s fate. Venezuelan actor Édgar Ramírez and Spaniard Adriana Paz further bolster this A-star cast, bringing to life a modern-day fable that sits somewhere between a crime thriller and a musical. Composed by songstress Camille and her partner and arranger Clément Ducol, the film’s score is a protagonist in its own right, with the performers having been selected for their singing talents as much as their acting skills.

For Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard collaborated with long-standing colleague Thomas Bidegain, who wrote the screenplay for A Prophet (in Competition, 2009), Rust and Bone (in Competition, 2012) and Dheepan (in Competition, 2015).