Blu-Ray Review: Emilia Perez

The Film

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez is a miracle of a film.

It shouldn’t exist, yet it does, and it is a beautiful, audacious, and life-affirming thrill that makes the soul dance.

Zoe Saldaña plays Rita, a smart and ambitious aide to a hapless lawyer stuck watching her career die in the hands of lesser men. Her introduction comes in a vibrant, pulse-pounding number that could be right out of The Forty-Second Street.

As we meet her, she’s the defense for a man she knows is guilty. Around her, the city explodes with life, murder, and passion. Out of nowhere, a call from a mysterious, yet obviously dangerous outsider, promises immense wealth for a single job. Rita, uncertain, looks around her. She’s surrounded by cleaners (all women), who ask what she has left to lose.

The caller turns out to be Manitas Del Monte, a vicious cartel lord with only one request: Rita must help them finish their gender reassignment surgery. “I have the sky, the land, and the power, but I do not have a song,” they lament. Their rebirth is as Emilia Perez, a new woman, with a new future ahead. To achieve this, Emilia must leave behind her family, who believe she is dead.

Where the story goes from there is best left unspoiled. I saw Emilia Perez cold. I only knew it was a film by Audiard, a filmmaker with a peculiar sense of humor. From the first musical number, I knew I was seeing something special.

None of it is naturalistic, and that’s the point. In the musical genre, the rules are: You sing when you can’t talk, and dance when you can’t sing. They are releases from the anxiety. In Audiard’s world, everyone lives in a state of barely holding on. Emilia is a crime lord who wants to start over; Rita is a lawyer who negotiates compromises with her values daily. Their songs explode vibrantly and without warning, bottled deep inside a shell they’ve built to survive the mundane.

And what songs they are! From pitter-patter to folk songs; and lamentations to modern dance numbers. Each one is an impressive delight. Yet they’re not interested in catchiness, though many will resonate for years to come. They’re more in line with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – another classic French film, where all the dialog is in song. It highlights the mundane to remind us of that which we rarely cherish. In Emilia Perez, even the details of an upcoming surgery become a song. You have to go with it. Sometimes words just aren’t enough.

This is Saldaña’s best work of her career, a tremendously nuanced performance that ranges from show-stopping song and dance to muted anger at the injustice of the world. Equally brilliant is Karla Sofía Gascón, who makes a spellbinding turn as both Del Monte and Perez. These are two unique characters, yet they are also the same. In a daring move, Audiard asks how much we keep of ourselves as we transition (in more ways than one) into different stages of our lives.

Selena Gomez plays Jessi, Del Monte’s wife, left alone after his death. She was only a child when the two wed, and she’s never had a chance to live another life. Even in death, Del Monte’s ghost haunts her. She is only her own woman when she breaks the rules he set in stone years earlier. Gomez does wonders with her small role, imbuing Jessi with deep anguish and childlike rebellion. She is, after all, almost a child. The only one not allowed to move to the next life, whatever it may be.

There are momentous sequences in Emilia Perez. Most are musical, but many are simply the stillness between characters. There is a meet-cute between two women as they compare the weapons they carry that is at first funny, then deeply distressing. That juxtaposition carries through the film. Everything lives in symbiosis, the horror and the beauty. Families of murder victims sing about how they need to lay their sorrow to rest. In another room, at the same time, the killers sing about how this is the first stone on the path they build towards salvation.

Emilia Perez is a story of transitions. It asks what forgiveness looks like throughout the ages, and how much one must suffer before one earns it. All the leads are damned souls, yet they haven’t achieved it alone. Audiard blends melodrama, telenovela, and epic drama as he weaves the destinies of these three women into one. The result is a hypnotic concoction, a maximalist opera mixed with cartel drama; as if Bob Fosse directed Sicario.

It is unlike anything I’ve seen and one of the best films of the year. It asks a lot from the audience, from the unlikely story to the untraditional song numbers, yet it rewards them in return with something truly unique.

Technical Specs & Presentation

Emilia Perez arrives in Finland on a barebones Blu-Ray without any bonus features and only the Nordic languages as subtitles. In other territories, notably France and the UK, the film receives a 4K edition with some bonus content.

The Blu-Ray itself is packed in the basic slimline box as one unified release for the territories. Nothing special, nothing notable. You pay for the film, and that's it.

Video

Emilia Perez was shot in 4K, and while the downscaled 1080p presentation isn't bad, you can tell it would benefit from a better high dynamic range output. Blacks are occasionally crushed and details are lost in the vivid landscape that Audiard and his team paint.

Luckily, colors do pop when they need to, especially Rita's big dance sequences like the opening number and the Oscar nominated El Mal song, where she takes on an entire benefit gala, calling out their hypocrisy in anger.

Viewed on a 4K screen, my PlayStation 5 upscaled the content admirably, and I can't say I was too displeased with the results. Considering that Emilia Perez is sold as a budget title (you can already snag it for under €15), it's entirely acceptable if you're just after the movie.

Audio

The sound mix on Emilia Perez is loud and punchy, with the musical numbers especially giving my home theater a good workout. It's missing the Dolby Atmos mix we get on the 4K, but the DTS-HD Master Audio doesn't skimp out on a rich soundscape neither.

For best demo purposes, take a look at the opening dance sequence, where the sounds of the city are wonderfully mixed into rear channels before they overpower the front speakers as the cacophony of modern life takes over.

Dialog is equally clear and it's nice to see the sound mix emphasizes a good mix between volume levels as the film shifts from regular talk to singing. That's not always the case, and I often find myself reaching for the remote especially with musicals where the dance numbers tend to be much louder than the rest of the content. Not here, Emilia Perez is a solid, classy mix all around.

Extras

The disc has nothing extra, not even trailers. Just your basic menus and the film.

Overall

I can understand why Emilia Perez is getting only the barest of releases in Finland. It wasn't exactly a massive box office draw, it's playing on Netflix, and it drew so much controversy (both deserved and undeserved) in the last months that it's not something any studio would want to risk anything more for.

That said, this is still a worthwhile and fascinating musical. One that, even in its failures, is revealing, captivating, and deeply humane. It's going to take years for it to be revisited and re-evaluated, and for that, physical media is absolutely necessary. Bonus material and behind the scenes content could easily provide context for the film, something that will prove necessary over time, as memories fade and people will start to ask why this movie in particular drew the ire of others.

Sadly, that's not what we get this time. But in the present state of the world, where it's not always a given we'll get even a physical copy in the first place, it is valuable that we have something.

If you're a fan of musical cinema, you owe it to yourself to see Emilia Perez. Even if you don't like it, but also probably especially if you don't.