Miracle: Jacques Audiard achieved it. With monumental ardour and audacity, the director succeeded in executing his plan as he needed, making a musical comedy within the Mexican cartels whereas embracing all of the complexity and absurdity of this proposal. He captures the gravity and pressure that inhabits the setting the place he locations his digicam and, significantly via the musical scenes that he phases, he additionally instills the exuberance and incomparable humor of one of the best Broadway musicals. . You need to get previous the mistrust aroused by the primary minutes to dive head first into this succession of loopy scenes, mixing the grotesque with the marvelous, overseas to any type of decorum or politeness.
Emilia Perez tells the rebirth of a lady who tries to make a clear sweep of her bloody previous, going to the help of the households of tens of 1000’s of cartel victims, and finds in her new id the chance to totally assume who she is. With out worry or filter, an unbelievable alternative for the filmmaker who movies it. Not disguising a sure naivety in its story, constitutive of the musical comedy style which has made transformation and redemption two main themes in its existence, the movie finds a wierd, nearly miraculous steadiness between frankly kitsch formal concepts. , which one would assume got here out of Pedro Almodóvar’s (after Megalopolis by Francis Ford Coppola, one other triptych throughout a settling of romantic scores, much less blissful), and a communicative vitality which sweeps away all the things in its path. It may generally appear ridiculous, veer in the direction of unconsciousness (on the flip of a sequence, we sing about rhinoplasty!), Jacques Audiard all the time cuts earlier than the road too many, the phrase which may make a scene have an actual snicker merely embarrassing.
Composed by singer Camille and her companion Clément Ducol, the music combines quite a few influences from South American music, particularly reggaeton, whereas drawing on the historical past of musicals. Harmonies, polyphony, sung dialogues like Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamiltonbut additionally a bit West Facet Story by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim when the songs query the likelihood or not of being extra or one thing aside from what we have been destined to develop into.
The final act, much less sleek and extra standard within the thriller, barely tempers the delirious enthusiasm that Emilia Perez provoked by his generosity for 2 hours. It’s nonetheless very nice to see Jacques Audiard return to the extent of his most lovely movies, after the too easy The Olympics in 2021, as a lot as to witness the continuation of his transformation as a filmmaker, decided to be a part of the Moderns and to overturn representations in cinema by providing weapons and a microphone to these we hear too little. The applause that adopted the screening on the Cannes Movie Competition means that the movie has maybe already secured a spot on the prize listing that Greta Gerwig and her jury will current on the night of Could 25.
Emilia Perez, a movie written and directed by Jacques Audiard, with Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz, 2h10. To be seen in cinemas from August 28, 2024.