In Mexico, a lawyer receives an unexpected offer to help a feared cartel boss retire from his business and disappear forever by becoming the woman he’s always dreamed of being.

French director Jacques Audiard’s latest movie is a difficult one to describe as it straddles multiple genres to tell a story that I’m going to say is pretty unique! ‘Emilia Pérez’ is the story of a Mexican cartel leader, who enlists the help of a lawyer to help him disappear so he can realise his dream of transitioning into a woman. It’s also a musical, it can be comedic, and it also delves into some incredibly dark and violent subject matter, such as the thousands of people who go missing in Mexico each year. More importantly it works, and Audiard has crafted a narrative that somehow manages to take all of these elements and bring them together into a brilliantly dynamic movie.

The movie begins with Zoe Saldana’s lawyer Rita ‘winning’ a case where she had to write the defence for a man accused of murder, who she was convinced was guilty. With her career stuck in a rut and her personal life not much better, she is tempted by a lucrative offer from an anonymous client – a client that turns out to be Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), a feared cartel leader. Taking him up on his offer, she travels to Thailand, then Israel, to find a way to covertly arrange his gender reassignment surgery, while also seeking to find a safe place for his wife (Selena Gomez) and two boys to live away from his enemies. Many years later, Manitas, now known as Emilia Pérez, tracks Rita down in London and sets her a new task – to reunite her with her family in Mexico without revealing who she really is or was.

I thought this was a terrific movie with a brilliantly inventive script and great performances particularly from Karla Sofía Gascón who plays her character both pre and post the reassignment surgery. The musical numbers are not show tunes in the vein of many Hollywood musicals so don’t expect to be humming them when you finish watching, but they have a rhythm that works with the tone of the movie and the sequences where they’re inserted are enhanced by their inclusion. It is well paced and zips around the globe, moving between different thematic elements that really shouldn’t work together, but they do and that’s down to Audiard’s direction and the compelling performances. You won’t see anything else like ‘Emilia Pérez‘ this year and it is a movie that is absolutely worth making time for.

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: Jacques Audiard

Starring: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Mark Ivanir and Édgar Ramírez

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt20221436/