Cast - Karla Sofía Garcón, Zoë Saldana, Selena Gomez.
Jacques Audiard - Director
"Habla, esta gente habla, pero ahora lo van a pagar."
As a Mexican, having to watch ignorant, simplistic, and often disrespectful depictions of how life is in this country is to be expected once in a while. There are countless examples of this in cinema, television, and the opinions of random Twitter users. Most of these are embraced, reclaimed, and even celebrated by large sections of the population, I doubt Emilia Pérez, with its soap opera sensibilities will be hated by many of them. For the more progressive outlets, critics from Mexico, and on Social Media, this is yet another example of a whitewashed representation of the entire country's way of living, its government, and attempting to tackle an issue that causes hundreds of thousands of dead and missing people every year without the proper education and grasp on the problem.
Research on this movie is non-existent, the director Jacques Audiard explained in an interview how he did not need to research or put a lot of effort into the film because "He already knew" thanks to his travels to the country. To me, this is what it represents, a vacationist effort to explain what it is like to live in Mexico to people who are not familiar with it. At leastThe Three Caballeros and Traveltalks only focused on the exploration of culture and painting Mexico as a "magical place filled with life" propagating the notion that, Mexicans are always happy and partying, instead, the movie, focuses on the issue of missing people and drug cartels and ends up feeling more like a parody.
The main character, a transgender narco played by Sofía Garcón redeems herself in the second half of the movie and tries to improve society by making an organization that will look for missing people with the help of other cartel members who are looking for redemption, confessing their crimes, the identity of the victims and where can they find them. Here is where the lack of research and out-of-touchness of the French director comes in, not only we are trying to redeem someone who, killed, raped, and caused generational trauma to hundreds of people, but we also have to accept her apologies, never confronting her for her crimes but instead thinking as if that person is dead. She receives the attention of the television networks, the government agencies, and in the end a statue for her good deeds, ignoring the hundreds of real-life organizations like Madres Buscadoras that will never have the same attention in this country. This is beyond what we know as real and follows a very old Hollywood story, of the gangster who seeks redemption but in the end, cannot leave their past, and I say Old Hollywood not because of this cliché alone, but because we are living in a post War on Drugs society and the amount of cruelty expressed by these organizations and individuals is beyond barbaric and to expect us to think they can be redeemed is above our consciousness and what we think is possible on this Earth.
It saddens me that barely anyone cares about this aspect of the movie except for us Mexicans. I understand why the transgender storyline is important and why many people identified with it, but to ignore the other part of the movie, the one that deals with such an immense problem that has no end to it, and not see a single review talking about it reaffirms the idea that they do not see us as real people with incredibly complex problems.
Writing this review is difficult, when such a topic is insanely personal to one, we end up following rabbit holes and grasping everything that is wrong with the movie. I will leave it at that, for this movie, which as a musical offers us nothing but repetitive lyrics, and weird sound mixing that makes everyone's vocals to be undecipherable, and as a story happening in Mexico offers us nothing to our mind and imagination. I will leave two recommendations, perhaps not as silly and "camp" as Emilia Pérez but offer a realistic, kind, and intimate view on the issues of transgender and missing people;El Secreto del Rio and Sin Señas Particulares.
Final Score - 1.5/5
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