Emilia Pérez (2024)

Plot of Emilia Pérez: Rita Mora Castro is a Mexican lawyer working for a company which supports villains. Her unhappiness with her job may come to an end when she is contacted by a drug lord, Juan Del Monte who tells her he wants to have gender reassignment surgery and asks for her help for a big financial reward. Rita researches and finds a surgeon, and Del Monte gets under the knife and emerges as a woman, so job done. Four years later they accidentally meet up again at a dinner in London and Del Monte, now Emilia Perez, asks Rita to help her get her children back. Rita goes to work and the children with their mother, Jesse come to live with Emilia, now posing as a distant cousin. In addition she and Rita have started an organisation which is dedicated to finding the bodies of the missing due to shootings in Mexico. When Jessi resumes a relationship with Gustavo, another villain, Emilia tries to prevent it, Jessi leaves with the children, Emilia cuts off her money and Rita is given a message that Emilia has been kidnapped. Disaster awaits.

Content: No sex or nudity, some drinking but no-one is drunk. Rita meets Del Monte in a grim truck in the middle of nowhere. She visits plastic surgeons in various countries and the cartel boss undergoes surgery. Emilia and Rita meet at a dinner in London, back in Mexico they initiate a charity which looks for the disappeared which has events. Emilia meets a woman and, it seems they become lovers. In the new world Jessi and the children go to live with Emilia but they fall out when Jessi takes up with a former lover, and disaster follows.

A View: Saw this film in Madrid and so at least some of the dialogue, which is almost all in Spanish, was lost to me, but the progress of the film is pretty obvious. I am not a fan of random singing in films and in this outing, having plastic surgeons singing, badly, just seemed like a bit of a joke. In fact it seemed to me that, apart for the final song which was terrific, the film would have been better without the warbling. Since its release it has been the subject of much controversy with almost all aspects of it being pilloried. Apparently the writer/director did not speak Spanish or English, which surely was a bit of a handicap. So, honestly, despite its multiple Oscar nominations, not really a watch unless you really like that sort of thing.

Fun Fact: Mexican trans director Camila Aurora Gonzáles made a short film in response to Emilia Pérez. Entirely shot in Mexico with no French person in the cast or crew, the film is a musical set in France showing several stereotypes of France and French people. I has been a hit in Mexico.