Jacques Audiard directs Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón and Selena Gomez in this Mexican crime musical where a cartel boss employs a lawyer to not just escape his dangerous life but transition him into being a fully fledged woman.

I’ll say it. He’s is the closest we now have to have the young Marty Scorsese of the 20th century. Audiard loves making genre cinema about people fighting both their environment and true nature. Crime, extreme pressure, the fallibility of emotional responses. I still find him an incredibly exciting filmmaker, especially as he seems to like cashing in all his prestige with every new project and betting it on something truly daring both formally and thematically. In the first act and third act, Emilia Pérez contains some of the best auteur movie making of the year and his career. It ain’t a musical you’ll ever be singing along to in the shower but it is physical, vibrant and operatic. The middle section contains a plot development that feels a little too worthy and out of character. It also contains scenes that remind me awkwardly of Mrs Doubtfire. Flawed as this section is, it also contains the optimum amount of Selena Gomez as the unaware moll “widow”. She is on fire whenever she is on screen. There’s is something ever so alluring about her grumpy pissed off face.

8

Perfect Double Bill: A Fantastic Woman (2018)

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