Are big screen musicals making a comeback? From the huge misfire that is JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX to the soaring WICKED with MOANA 2 and MUFASA: THE LION KING tossed somewhere in between, if you love this genre, 2024 has been your year. (It’s also been a year for musical biopics with MARIA, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN and BETTER MAN all coming out in December.) One movie musical that’s showing up on many critics’ lists of Best Films of 2024 is EMILIA PÉREZ. Not being a huge fan of the genre, I had to muster up the nerve to watch it just to see what all the fuss was about.

Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña, the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY franchise; the STAR TREK franchise; the AVATAR franchise) is an undervalued lawyer in Mexico City. One day, she is contacted by Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), a ruthless drug kingpin, who makes Rita a very lucrative offer: Help him disappear and get gender-affirming surgery so that he can begin a new and authentic life as a woman and she will be rich beyond her wildest dreams. Rita agrees and Manitas goes under the knife. Four years later, they meet at a dinner in London only now Manitas is Emilia Pérez and she wants Rita’s help again.

I didn’t know anything about EMILIA PÉREZ going into it other than that it was a musical, so I was very surprised by what I saw. A cross between SICARIO and MRS. DOUBTFIRE, I wouldn’t even call it a musical (it’s also billed as a comedy, which I just don’t understand) because that connotes images, at least in my mind, of fingers in cheeks and rhyming stanzas. Not here. Who knew that songs could have lyrics that include vaginoplasty and penoplasty? Maybe that’s the comedy part. EMILIA PÉREZ is really an operetta with the characters adding a musical lilt to their words rather than belting out show-stopping numbers akin to “Defying Gravity”. Surprisingly, it works and some of the numbers, like “Para” and “Papá”, are especially poignant.

Saldaña, who has made a lucrative career out of being in franchises, finally has a role that’s worthy of her talent and she doesn’t disappoint. Here, she not only speaks throughout much of the film in her first language of Spanish, she also sings and dances. The film’s biggest revelation though is Gascón, who is well known in Mexico for her appearances in a number of telenovelas and films. Similar to the character she plays here, Gascón came out as a trans woman in 2016 and began undergoing gender transition two years later

EMILIA PÉREZ isn’t a perfect movie though, and the film’s storytelling and pacing are rather messy. I’m not sure if it will end up on my list of Best Films of 2024 but I will give French writer-director Jacques Audiard (THE SISTERS BROTHERS; RUST AND BONE) ten out of ten for taking a huge swing even if he doesn’t always connect with the ball. The film premiered earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival where it took home the Jury Prize. Its female ensemble, which includes Selena Gomez (TV’s ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING), who plays Manitas’ mob wife, Jessi, together won the Best Actress award

EMILIA PÉREZ is streaming now on Netflix. Best film or not, it’s certainly worth a watch.

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