Rita, an underrated lawyer working for a large law firm more interested in getting criminals out of jail than bringing them to justice, is hired by the leader of a criminal organization.
We can’t deny Emilia Perez its share of audacity (note, by the way, the consonance with Disney star Selena Gomez here in the cast, which seems to us to be only slightly coincidental). A chic film, certainly, intended to be shocking, but above all toc! What is the point of the undeniable formal mastery – reminiscent of Larrain‘s cinema – the choreography and other staging effects, if not a script based exclusively on offbeat lines and situations, song lyrics (surprisingly funny on the whole, an ingredient too often lacking in Audiard‘s filmography), “what’s the fuck” as they say. Could it be that Audiard was clumsily – and naively – trying to tick boxes? Indeed, it’s hard to see this cross between a cartel film and a West Side Story-style musical as a genuine trans-identity anthem… The line seems a little thick to us, but since Greta Gerwig has committed Barbie, nothing is less certain: will the hyper-kitsch musical universe pull her in?
It’s a pity, because apart from the weak script and Selena Gomez‘s choice of musical universe, the work is evident at every level of this Saint Laurent production. Too much, in fact, and we’re almost back to what was once known on our side of the Atlantic as the Cinéma du look: beautiful (at least according to the current canons of images reflected by the world of luxury), flashy, favoring highly animated images and multiple effects to accompany music (giant music videos), rather than composing a conceptually richer structure, or articulating a literary, intellectual, artistic or even poetic thought. Or to offer a sincere portrait.
The film brings us back to the same question that has so often plagued us in Audiard’s filmography: where is he going with this, what cinephile flame drives and animates him? Author or maker? Sensitive or spectacular filmmaker? Entertaining or questioning? You’ll certainly be able to read in the writings of our colleagues that Emilia Perez gives Audiard the opportunity to assert his style, indulge himself and show off his virtuosity. At Cannes this year, many were even making him a serious contender for the Palme d’Or for his modernity of tone coupled with a rediscovered mastery, and like Serrebrennikov, many of the sequence shots, many of the coordinations involving the various trades (actors, lighting designers, set designers, choreographers, etc.) can indeed seem magical, or ingenious, and on many occasions the viewer will wonder “how” Audiard managed to conjure up such effects. But beyond the “how”, we’re left with the “what”, a story that’s as empty as it is insipid and uninteresting, wispy and mumbo jumbo – the antithesis of Pialat, Rohmer, or any other storyteller or observer interested in truth, nature, the psyche, but also in the “why” behind the “how”. Why a musical? Why a cartel story? Why a story about a highly improbable change of sexual identity? Why so much Manicheism? Why Selena Gomez? And, in the end, why Emilia Perez, if not to show off a little, and offer, it’s true, rather pleasant entertainment.
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