#43: Je suis Emilia Pérez
Death By Consumption
2/25/25 - 3/3/25
I did it. In the nick of time, I finally watched Emilia Pérez, a grueling process that literally took me three days. I started it on Saturday but felt so overwhelmed that, 30 minutes in, I had to turn it off. The next day, I knew it was D-Day — if I didn't watch Emilia Pérez by the Oscars, I knew I would never watch it — but, by the time I had reached the final 30 minutes, I was no longer overwhelmed and I was, in fact, bored, so I turned it off again. Finally, I somehow finished it yesterday. I do not remember anything else that happened this week (a week in which my sister came to visit and we celebrated her 40th birthday together — sorry, Nikki!). All I am and all I will be and all I know is Emilia Pérez.
Emilia Pérez (2024) — on Netflix
Emilia Pérez is a big, operatic movie, one that takes enormous swings and audacious risks, while asking important questions. Questions like: What? and, Are you okay?
The nicest thing I can say about Emilia Pérez is that it's not a bad concept, on paper. A cartel boss transitioning... sure! Why not. I can think of ten worse film ideas right now. But once you think about it for more than two seconds, the premise already starts to get a little icky — it's very, like, "What if a MACHO MAN became an EMOTIONAL WOMAN???" which is a very juvenile and simple way of looking at the world. But, really, that's on me for expecting a nuanced take on gender from the French. I'm sorry! I won't make that mistake again.
Emilia Pérez is a jumble of stereotypes that are, unfortunately, more boring than offensive. (Everyone in Mexico lives under a yellow filter and eats exclusively at crowded street markets where people are regularly stabbed or kidnapped in broad daylight.) But because I have something wrong with me, I was hoping the French would be even more stereotypical than they are — instead, it was clear they didn't really care about anyone they were portraying, not even enough to hate them. It's been described as transphobic, but I think that's giving it too much credit; it's transblah. Trans people are just an empty vessel for the director's vision, which boils down to: can you believe this idea I had for a movie??? This film could and should have been so much worse! We deserve a transphobic Megalopolis-meets-Cats musical movie epic from hell. Instead, by the end I was bored to tears, which is a shame because the beginning of the film is absolutely fucking crazy.
The story, if you are unclear, is about Emilia Pérez, a transwoman who, pre-transition, was one of the biggest cartel bosses in Mexico. Zoe Saldaña (who, I will admit, put her everything into this film and was very enjoyable to watch; I am anti-Emilia but I am not anti-Zoe!) plays the lawyer who Emilia hires to help her transition, while also helping Emilia fake her own death so that she can be reborn as a woman. Emilia convinces Zoe's character to help her by having men constantly threatening Zoe's life. You'd think, after multiple days in a row in which someone sneaks up behind you and throws a bag over your head, you'd be a little salty about your new employer, but Zoe's character instead decides she deeply loves Emilia — literally seconds after being nearly strangled to death by one of Emilia's goons, Zoe Saldaña sings to an Israeli doctor, "You better trust my Mr. Mystery / If you had seen what he has shown to me / You'd be a better man." This song is one of the most jaw-dropping moments of the film for many reasons, including:
- When Zoe Saldaña sings "If you had seen what he has shown to me," based on what we've seen so far, it appears that what she is referring to is the time, 5 minutes earlier, when Emilia flashed her tits at Zoe for no reason. They must have been very persuasive breasts!
- Zoe is singing this song to try to convince this doctor — who typically does gender confirmation surgeries — to do a gender confirmation surgery. Why he is refusing to do this surgery when, again, that's his whole job, is unclear. But through the power of song, he is gradually convinced to do the job he already does every day.
- At one point, Zoe — who, again, 2 seconds earlier was nearly strangled by a cartel goon in order to convince her to take this job — turns to the camera and sings to us, the gays in the audience, that she will never let us down. If it's that easy, it made me wonder why GLAAD isn't out here strangling a bunch of people. Let's start turning this ship around!
- The song also includes the lyrics "Changing the body changes society / changing society changes the soul / changing the soul changes society / changing society changes it all," which sounds like something I would write if I were trying to mock Lin-Manuel, and which I thought was deeply embarrassing but was used as the Oscar clip for Zoe, so what do I know.
The (Oscar-winning?!) songs are barely songs, with most of the actors speak-singing in raspy, atonal voices, to melodies that sound like they were invented on the spot. It sounds like the actors were handed the lyrics 3 seconds before they yelled "action!" and they all just had to wing it. Every song reminded me of the songs I would make up and sing to my dog to describe the things he was currently doing; it's very, like, "You are walking along / looking so cute / and fluffy!" Since every song sounds more or less like talking, you can be a full 30 seconds into a song before you realize it even is a song. It's made me question my own reality, as if anyone speaking to me is actually singing and I just can't tell. I could be getting laid off at work and I'd still be staring at HR like... is this a song?
Selena Gomez — who, not content to be one of the worst English-language actors, got a 2-month Duolingo subscription to prove she can actually be bilingually awful — plays Emilia's wife. She's playing a wife and mother, but her role seems to have been written for an angsty preteen. She's always mad, but in each scene she's mad about a different thing, until she's so mad about everything that she — and I hope you don't mind me spoiling here, but if you haven't watched it by now I'm willing to bet you never will — goes and gets herself and Emilia killed, in a hilarious accident that happens like 12 seconds before the credits roll. Truly, I did not expect a two-plus hour opera about a trans cartel boss to end in a silly semi-accidental exploding car crash, but that's kind of on me for expecting a coherent end to this film after everything it had put me through.
Overall, the film was terrible, but the most disappointing part is that it could have been much worse. I feel like I was robbed of a truly world-ending psychotic cinematic experience, like when Taylor Swift's scene in Cats unleashed Covid. Beyond the first 30 minutes, it's not even a fun mess! Everyone made fun of the Penis To Vagina song but that was by far the most fun I had in the entire movie (and it's also the closest thing there is to a real song in the film). If the whole film had been this catchy and deranged, the gay community would have forgiven a lot.
Ultimately, it feels like the worst example I've seen so far of what I like to think of as Covid Brain Fog Cinema, a new film movement I fear will only get worse as the Trump Era continues. Covid Brain Fog Cinema (which, in addition to Emilia Pérez, includes Megalopolis, Poor Things, and everything Emerald Fennell makes) is all about experimentation for experimentation's sake, typically involving a mishmash of genres — not out of any deep love or respect for those genres, but just because it helps with hype. It involves deeply baffling choices, but if you question why specific choices were made then you are an enemy of art itself.
The messages in Covid Brain Fog Cinema are anodyne — usually something like "we should all be nicer!" or "society is messed up!" — because it knows you'll be on your phone for half the time, and it hates you for that. To deal with your small-brained distractedness, the film will either tap dance furiously for your attention, throwing insane moment after insane moment at you until your internal processing center calls it quits and your lizard brain takes over, or it'll just give up and start doing whatever the hell the director wants to do. They often feel like films made by a youngest sibling, and we, the audience, are their ungrateful older siblings: who even gives a shit what I'm putting in my movie, it's not like you're even watching anyway, and even if you did watch it, it's not like you'd understand it. The only things Covid Brain Fog Cinema has to say are: "Look at me!" and "Don't understand me? Try being less stupid, stupid."
Over the past five years we have all collectively lost our minds, and now we are all trapped in Hell, where the only movie in every theater is Emilia Pérez.
Nickel Boys (2024) — on MGM+ (?????? surely that's not a real thing)
AND YET: the agony and ecstasy of the human experience, that a society that can produce an Emilia Pérez can also produce a Nickel Boys. This film saved my life after the horrors of Emilia. It's beyond gorgeous, and — unlike Emilia, which I promise I will try to stop talking about now — genuinely inventive, but not for the sake of inventiveness. Its first-person perspective is the most original filmmaking trick I've seen in ages, putting you directly inside the characters' bodies, which I imagine was designed to challenge majority-white audiences to live inside the bodies of these Black boys, and see the world through their eyes. On paper, I'll admit, it sounded a bit annoying, if not nauseating from a seasickness perspective — sometimes a fixed camera shot is a relief! — but it's stunning what they were able to pull off here. Why have I not seen all the Terrence Malick boys screaming about this movie?!
Beyond the visuals, the story is so delicately and beautifully handled, trusting the audience to think for ourselves, something so few movies do anymore. They don't hand-hold, they don't over-explain, and thank God they don't linger on or needlessly exploit anti-Black violence. This is a movie about trauma but it is not trauma porn, a line that far too many movies think they need to cross to try to make the audience feel the pain, and for me that absence made the film even stronger. It leaves room for the emotions to build slowly inside you, until the final few seconds, when the credits roll and the whole experience wallops you. I don't think I'm the only person who didn't cry at all, until the movie ended and the tears finally hit. In a year of fun but largely forgettable films, Nickel Boys will stay with me.
"The 97th Academy Awards" — on ABC
I don't know if something is wrong with me (don't answer) — I saw a lot of hate for this years' Oscars, but I had a great time! I suppose, since it was light on musical numbers or movie montages or really anything other than awards, your enjoyment was 100% dependent on how you feel about Conan as a host, so it's lucky for me that I have been a die-hard Conan fan since I was a kid. If you can't find the humor in the stupid Dune sandworm costume playing instruments, then I feel sorry for you and I hope you someday get the Jimmy Fallon-hosted Oscars of your dreams. He'll play flip cup with Angela Bassett or do other totally random forced-viral moments and everyone will clap like seals. But for me, I need nothing more than Conan standing on a stage, gleefully mocking Karla Sofia Gascon to her face and calling Drake a pedophile. I'm a simple man with simple tastes, what can I say!
As for the actual awards: uhhhhhhhhh is Hollywood okay? If I speak about Emilia Pérez any more I will actually die at the hands of Karla Sofía Gascón, so I'll just say that, for those of you who didn't watch the movie, you got the gist of the film from Zoe Saldaña's psychotically embarrassing "MOMMY!!!!" moment, not to mention the terrifying French duo who tormented the world with their singing. I highly doubt they were intending to troll the audience, but attempting to start a singalong to a song literally no one in the room can even remember a single word to — even though they all literally just gave you an Oscar for that song — is very very funny. I still can't believe they actually won. Diane Warren is going to fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower.
I'm exhausted by the Anora discourse, and need it to stop. It was a fun film, but not an especially deep one, so it's already collapsing under the weight of discourse. It was not meant to win this many awards! I genuinely fear the movie Sean Baker will inflict upon us all next.
Lastly, I will just say that we absolutely need to bring back movie montages. I want to see clips from the movies, not Robert Downey Jr. free associating on whoever he happens to be looking at in the audience! I want to be moved by the collective power of cinema, not bored by Adrien Brody giving literally the worst speech you've ever heard, like one of those flop best man speeches at a wedding where you can tell even the groom is going to have a hard time looking the guy in the eyes after it's over. The Oscars should either be a beautiful tribute to films or completely insane, and this ceremony didn't quite pull off either — though having Margaret Qualley(?) suddenly do an interpretive dance(?) that kicked off a James Bond theme song medley(?) performed by Lisa(?) and Doja Cat(?) and Raye(?) was a step in the right direction. To paraphrase Nicole Kidman, we come to the Oscars to feel confused and alarmed, and I didn't get enough of that this year!