Film Review: Emilia Pérez
by Shelly Schoeneshoefer
Jacque Audiard, France, Mexico 2024
As advised by my film festival team, I went blindly into this film expecting that I would be so lucky to understand anything since I only recently started learning Spanish and hoped to understand the French subtitles. So, while watch ing this film, I thought to myself, this film really feels like a French film and not a Mexican one. Why did I have that feeling? Well, there is almost always a moment where the film breaks out in a song-and-dance routine no matter what the genre is. French audiences love this. In this film Emilia Pérez aka Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón) sings for an audience while Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldana), Emilia’s lawyer wears a magnificent red snake outfit as the two of them describe Mexico’s underworld, which surrounds them. I found the film very provocative but not without flaws. I spoke to a young woman from Mexico who said it didn’t capture the true voice of Mexico. She said it was too French and maybe that is why it won the prize at Cannes. What I didn’t like about the film was the constant switching of locations. First, they were in Mexico, then Switzerland, then Mexico, then London. The location switching wasn’t needed to tell this story of the birth of a Mexican LGBTQIA+ Saint figure.
