Jacques Audiard’s new film, “Emilia Pérez”, is an overinflated work (in every sense of the word), eager to flaunt its so-called production value at every turn and hop on the bandwagon of contemporary political sensitivities.

For a few years now, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard seems to have been fishing for new audiences, constantly reinventing himself with an almost paranoid zeal in every new film. This strategy feels like a calculated attempt to ingratiate himself with viewers. After a string of “macho” subjects in the 2000s, featuring bad boys navigating carceral and violent worlds, Audiard discovered that riding the wave of current trends can be profitable. Starting with Dheepan (which quickly earned a Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2015), he began to tap into broad social issues, blending them into his detached perspective. After flattering vulnerable immigrants with a quick and easy mea culpa in Dheepan, he made a brief stop in the ancestral territory of the Western, undergoing its own revisionist moment (The Sisters Brothers, 2018), before turning his gaze toward bohemian, progressive youth, whom he observed with a fatherly indulgence in Les Olympiades (2021). 

Now, the director returns to a global focus, alternating between Franco-French films that critique and romanticise his nation (e.g. “Our state apparatus is inhumane, but at least we still know how to make love”) and international films stuffed with clichés about foreign lands.

In Emilia Pérez, every frame insists on its cosmopolitanism, moving seamlessly from Mexican cartels to Bangkok’s corners. Lacking the budget for James Bond-level extravagance, the film resorts to flashing neon signs bearing iconic place names (London, Tel Aviv), only to shift into interiors that could have been filmed anywhere. The result is a story that’s more generic and interchangeable than transnational. Despite its ambitions to present an all-encompassing Mexican epic, moving from the drug trafficking world to NGOs searching for kidnapping victims, the film barely scratches the surface of its locales, relying on simplistic stereotypes (Mexico: a violent country; London: a business hub) that evoke a middle school essay on world geography. Which makes it unclear whether the film’s research went deeper than sketching out a megalomaniacal narrative intention in a few lines.

The connecting thread is Emilia, formerly Manitas, a cartel leader who abruptly becomes a woman. Literally overnight: a title card announces four years have passed, and the rough-looking, gravelly-voiced thug transforms seamlessly into a polished lady with a wardrobe of Yves Saint Laurent outfits. Audiard sidesteps the complexities of this transition with a simple cut in the editing room; what remains is the aftermath. The story hinges on this transformation (embodied by Karla Sofía Gascón) symbolising a moral facelift: Manitas evolves into Emilia, a benevolent figure healing community trauma and engaging in redemption. Emilia, having announced Manitas’ death, calls her family back, unable to live without her two children – though her ex-wife (Selena Gomez) has other romantic plans. 

The film struggles to make this classical mix-up involving a trans character – a convenient narrative trope – feel believable or suspenseful. Despite its two-hour runtime, the events remain stereotypical and lazily conceived, with each formal flourish evaporating without impact.

Emilia Pérez clearly aims to dazzle stylistically. Much of the film’s effect hinges on the potential shock of viewers familiar with Audiard’s virile dramas finding him now orchestrating an essentially female cast in a sentimental operetta-like spectacle. The sung drama – alternating between rap and chanson – tries to animate the mise-en-scène but fails. The contrasting themes – naturalistic portrayals of a troubled space juxtaposed with lyrical, musical elements – could theoretically echo the improbable duality of Manitas-turned-Emilia. However, the execution feels forced, as Audiard directs with a stylistic monotony more focused on showcasing financial resources than telling a compelling story. This attempt comes across as a desperate bid to stay relevant when the narrative itself is weak.

Much like Joker 2, the use of the musical genre appears as a last resort when nothing else, in terms of narrative strength, delivers results. We’ve entered a revival of this genre – long relegated to the golden age of American studios – as an extreme form of accessorising films with a veneer of “cool”.

Ultimately, Emilia Pérez relies on a schematic approach to emotion. The accusations of transphobia directed at the film, raised in many reviews, must be understood in this context – not so much because Audiard strategically chooses marketable topics, but because of his distant and superficial exploration of them, betraying his disinterest or lack of curiosity.

When Emilia faces the threat of losing her children, she reverts to masculinity: her voice deepens, her face hardens, and she seems possessed. The film cannot move beyond this biological essentialism, constrained by a binary understanding of gender: men inhabit the world of violence and night (like any cartel boss, Manitas issues orders from a truck after putting a bag over his interlocutor’s head), while women’s universe is characterised by tenderness and warm colours. For a film that seemed poised to transgress gender norms, such a self-sabotaging sequence reveals Audiard’s tired perspective and brings us back down to earth.

Victor Morozov

Film critic and journalist; writes regularly for Dilema Veche and Scena9. Doing a MA film theory programme in Paris.