Producers: Pascal Caucheteux, Jacques Audiard, Valérie Schermann, Anthony Vaccarello   Director: Jacques Audiard   Screenplay: Jacques Audiard, with the collaboration of Thomas Bidegain   Cast: Zoë Saldaña, Karla Sofia Gascón, Adriana Paz, Selina Gomez, Édgar Ramírez, Mark Ivanir and Eduardo Aladro   Distributor: Netflix

Grade: C

Audacity can be a fine thing, but sometimes trying too hard can be self-defeating.  That’s the case with Jacques Audiard’s musical melodrama, originally intended by him as an opera—in which form the story, inspired by a segment of Boris Razon’s 2018 novel “Écoute,” might have been more successful, even though it would definitely have been a soap opera.  As it is, the combination of drama, song-and-dance, farce, social commentary and tragedy in “Emilia Pérez” makes for a truly bizarre mélange.      

The initial focus is on Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña), a lawyer in Mexico City with an extraordinary facility for composing effective courtroom speeches for her boss (Eduardo Aladro) to deliver.  Naturally she’s frustrated that he takes credit for her work, and pained by the fact that her defense summations pervert justice by getting guilty people off, but it’s a job. 

Among the clients whose acquittal her skill is instrumental in winning is a media mogul accused of killing his wife, and drug cartel boss Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), recognizing who’s really responsible for the outcome, is so impressed that he summons Rita furtively to a meeting, where he promises her wealth and influence if she assists him in achieving a change in his life.

That change involves gender transition.  Manitas reveals that he’s been receiving hormone replacement treatment and enlists Rita to find a specialist willing to perform the surgery that will complete the process.  Manitas’ death will then be feigned, and Rita will arrange for Emilia Pérez, his female persona, to disappear.  Naturally Manitas will have to leave his wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their children behind, but they will be amply provided for, and protected, in Switzerland.

Confronted with an offer she can hardly refuse, Rita interviews possible surgeons, and finally Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir) in Tel Aviv is convinced to take charge.  The procedure is a success, Rita is amply rewarded and Emilia goes off, with plenty of money at her disposal, to make a new life for herself.

Four years later Rita finds herself at a sumptuous affair in London seated beside a woman who reveals herself as Emilia.  She’s decided that she cannot get along without her children and instructs Rita to inform Jessi that she’s a relative of Manitas who feels responsible for helping to raise the children back in Mexico.  Jessi ultimately agrees to the arrangement: it will afford her the opportunity to resume the affair with Gustavo Bon (Édgar Ramírez) she’d been having before Manitas’ death.  So Jessi and the children move into Emilia’s compound not knowing who she really is, and Rita reluctantly becomes an integral part of their lives.

Complexities now abound as Emilia, finally realizing the extent of the pain cartel violence has caused after her son indicates that he intuits who she is, decides to create a foundation called La Lucecita to assist grieving family members in discovering the fate of relatives who’ve gone missing.  In the course of its work Emilia meets Epifanía Flores (Adriana Paz), a woman searching for news of her husband, and the two become involved.  Meanwhile Jessi has taken up again with Bon, and when she announces that she and the children will leave with him, Emilia explodes, leading to a last act that includes kidnapping, a shoot-out, chases and death.

In presenting this strange brew, Audiard resorts to flamboyance on a major scale.  Though he uses some Mexican location work, he’s shot the film largely in Parisian studios, showcasing the elaborate production design of Emmanuelle Duplay and Anthony Vaccarello and the costumes of Virginie Montel, while he, cinematographer Paul Guilhaume and editor Juliette Welfling use myriad devices, from split screens to hazy transitions and dreamy dissolves, to energize what amounts to a filmed stage musical jazzed up to keep the adrenalin flowing.  Yet he’s also intent on wringing every ounce of emotion out of the scenario, so that the movie is a weepie as much as a thriller.

It would help, however, if the movie were particularly well-written, and the musical numbers better than mediocre.  Unfortunately, the dialogue is more pedestrian than inspired, the songs composed by Audiard and his collaborators Clément Ducol and Camille Dalmais for the most part prosaic, and the choreography by Damien Jalet unimpressive.  All the cinematic razzmatazz in the world can’t make up for material that, apart from the supposedly daring premise and occasional verbal shocks, isn’t nearly as bold as it thinks it is.

To be sure, there’s compensation in the performances.  Paz is affecting and Gomez tries very hard, but Saldaña and Gascón are absolutely outstanding, with the latter in particular capturing the rage, sadness and determination of a person unable to jettison the past but resolved to seek redemption for the wrongs committed during it.

But even they cannot salvage a film that aims for an artsy edginess it never achieves.  “Emilia Pérez” is so anxious to startle us that it neglects simply to move us.