SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK: Jacques Audiard's EMILIA PEREZ (2024, wri/dir Jacques Audiard, w/ Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascon, Selena Gomez, France, 132mns)

Jacques Audiard's musical-transgender drug cartel boss-nearly all female focused movie is audacious. Which is to be expected from Audiard who has defined his career since 2009's UN PROPHETE with movies of wild ambition, different genres, great risks.

And while this writer watched the movie, slapping his forehead numerous times at the crazy choices, EMILIA PEREZ does pass the simple (and most important) question:

Does it work?

Yes.

If you're an Audiard fan (and this writer is), the bold bonkers blend of genre, style, theme is part of what makes Audiard, Audiard.

The trick here is cohering several explosive issues into a movie that also wants to be a musical, an action movie, a Fassbinder-esque TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT.

Have we met before?

Mexican drug lord, Manitas del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascon), hires hard working attorney Rita Castro Mora (Saldana), to coordinate their transition to Emilia Perez while taking care of their wife Jessi (Gomez) and children. But when, years later, Emilia, now fully transitioned, brings her family back to Mexico and tries to be an "Aunt" without revealing the truth (the family members think their husband/father dead), complications ensue.

It's hard to know how this movie plays to an audience not inside baseball to Audiard's love of cinematic collage and daring. Right at the start, Zoe Saldana breaks out into song and dance with working class Mexican street vendors while trying to get a guilty wife-killer, Gustavo (CARLOS's Edgar Ramirez who will reappear later) acquitted.

It's the right move. Either you go with the movie right then and there or you turn it off. Two minutes in, you're told what the movie is going to be.

But then Audiard keeps upping the ante. Twenty minutes later, a big musical number occurs in a Bangkok hospital dedicated to gender-reassignment. A few scenes later, an Israeli re-assignment doctor and Saldana are singing at each other across a table.

This ubiquitous still from the movie exemplifies its neon drenched color palette and bold graphic style, hallmarks of Audiard’s work.

At the same time, the story embraces melodrama in declarative scene after declarative scene. So if you accept the tone, you can get into the story. And the story is engaging.

Emilia dedicates her post-transition life to righting the wrongs of her pre-transition narco drug lord existence. Emilia finds love, validification, purpose. At the same time, her former wife Jessi and her two children, are adrift without their husband/father. And Jessi specifically resumes her bad habit of dating destructive men.

It's hard to parse out what works and what doesn't in EMILIA PEREZ because sometimes you suspect they're one and the same.

From the viewpoint of craft, moviemaking, dynamic storytelling, PEREZ is a winner. This writer loves big swings at the fence. And Audiard and his team, including songwriter Camille who admirably creates an original set of songs here, find fascinating ways to weave musical conventions into action/gangster/narco genre conventions.

Musical song and dance numbers are written/choreographed in modern jagged, sharp rhythms and breaks. Zoe Saldana spits out a song at a banquet of hypocritical donors while her dance moves mock them.

Yet, there are also a lot of "should this really have been done" moments. French Audiard is an European tourist when it comes to the death, destruction, and damage Americas' drug trade ravages on countries like Mexico. The majority of the movie was also shot in France with heavy VFX. And it's fair to ask if cinematic bravery and risk taking alone merit the kind of integrity one needs for people living the story you're telling to say, "Yes, that's right. This movie is earned."

I'm not sure it is.

Still, Filmmakers should grapple with LGBTQ+, drug war, feminist, family, societal crisis issues.

Emilia Perez navigates the choices of a lifetime.

Often cinema is about examining, breaking, challenging taboos and conventions. It's a good thing that EMILIA PEREZ dares to exist even if its existence also forces a dialogue about what's problematic in its conception.

Any movie that gets you to earnestly engage with critical issues of the day feels like a worthy movie.

EMILIA PEREZ is a successful movie by these metrics.

At the same time, you do also have to ask yourself when too much is too much. Does EMILIA PEREZ speak to the average moviegoer beyond its core audience of cinephiles? Or do a lot of people say, "What the f' is this?" and turn it off?

In struggling with these issues, an intuition of sorts still speaks out.

For movies to be relevant, they must from time to time be audacious. Movies have to take chances and find ways to employ modern societal and stylistic grammar to tell gripping stories.

EMILIA PEREZ is cinematically fascinating and emotionally engaging.

And so by that measure...this movie definitely works. Please check it out and let us know what you think. The dialogue is part of the dialectic.

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club.