Netflix And Chill: Emilia Pérez (2024)

I assure you that I had this scheduled for a viewing for some time before it came away as the big winner at the 2025 Golden Globes ceremony. Emilia Pérez ended up on my radar when it started to garner praise in the second half of last year, but I wasn't sure when I would get a chance to finally see it. That chance came around when it dropped on Netflix, but I ended up waiting a while as other feature films from 2024 continued to vie for my attention.

This is the story of the titular Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón), who starts the movie as a cartel kingpin known as Manitas. Manitas wants to disappear, wants a whole new life, and wants their family to be safe. They enlist the help of a lawyer named Rita (Zoe Saldaña), and everything soon falls into place. Years pass, and Rita ends up working for her former employer once more, this time ensuring that her wife (Jessi, played by Selene Gomez) and children move in with her, offering the explanation that Emilia is a caring cousin of the apparently-dead Manitas. Emilia also looks to use her ill-gotten money to start helping those who have had their lives destroyed by crime and cartels, but things grow more complicated as she watches Jessi start moving on with her own life in a way that could lead to the family moving away.

There are a number of different elements here that are worthy of consideration. First of all, writer-director Jacques Audiard (although there are a number of other names involved here throughout the writing process) is someone who hasn't really made a bad movie yet, from the seven or eight that I have seen by now. Secondly, this is a musical. Third, and arguably the most important, is . . . well, I think I should use a whole new paragraph to discuss that.

As women try to make progress in Hollywood, and as other people start to push for representation in films and on TV, there's a reasonable argument made about leaving room for them to make mistakes. Equality will only be real when all film-makers have the same time and space as white male film-makers, who all tend to get another chance after delivering something that either under-performs or outright stinks. I would say that this also applies to the LGBTQ+ community, in general, and, to get to my point as it relates to this film, the portrayal of transgender characters. I wasn't really sure if Emilia Pérez really was about a trans woman, or whether it was about a criminal going to extreme lengths to move on from an old life. Both of those things could be true, or neither. Either way, Emilia Pérez isn't actually, from my own limited perspective, a film featuring a transgender lead character that stays focused on the transgender experience. It's actually very familiar territory, but that territory looks different with this main character at the heart of it. I would also say that it's not really that great a film, but I hope that it becomes one of many such films that keep pushing for equality and representation of those who would have previously not been so celebrated for their involvement, on either side of the camera, with these kinds of stories.

I cannot fault the cast, and particular praise should go to both Gascón and Saldaña. The former does a great job of showing how her new life provides a real mix of regret and relief, the latter goes through a very similarly turbulent journey for very different reasons. Gomez is also very good, but fares better when her character isn't as central to things as she becomes in the third act. Adriana Paz is the last person I have to mention, making a strong impression with her few scenes, showing a brilliant mix of vulnerability and self-protection that Emilia admires, and is moved by, and there's also a role for Édgar Ramírez that doesn't really let him do much.

The pacing works quite well for the 132-minute runtime, and the performances ensure that every scene has something compelling in it, but the songs never feel strong enough, moments of real creativity and visual flair are few and far between, and anyone who has seen more than a handful of films will know where things are going by the time we get to the halfway point (if not before).

Maybe that's why Emilia Pérez is worth celebrating though. Maybe it's a film with a transgender character at the heart of it that is happy to not be any kind of super-sharp and super-smart modern classic. Maybe it's progress to have a film like this that is just okay. Or maybe I'll need to revisit it one day, and perhaps see something more worthwhile in it.

6/10

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Mubi Monday: See How They Fall (1994)

Not the prequel to See How They Run that the title may suggest, this is a French thriller that looks at a quest for revenge, the not-so-subtle-art of some aggressive con work, and what people will do to protect others they end up caring about.

Jean Yanne is Simon, a seemingly everyday guy, a sales rep, who ends up hunting down the people responsible for the death of his friend, a police officer named Mickey (Yvon Bak). Meanwhile, Marx (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is shaping a wary young man (Mathieu Kassovitz) into a competent protégé. These people are inevitably due to collide together, but will any resolution actually prove satisfying for anyone involved?

Directed by Jacques Audiard, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Alain Le Henry (based on a book, “Triangle”, by Teri White), this is a decent feature debut. Audiard may have delivered much stronger work over the last 10-15 years (check out his filmography, there are numerous greats to choose from), but he delivers an impressive character study here, couched in the trappings of a standard con/crime movie. The source material being titled “Triangle” clarifies how strong the bonds between the main characters become, and the strong emotion running throughout many scenes makes this as much about passion as it is about criminal activity, which allows viewers to filter or tilt the film in a way that blurs the lines between love and hate.

Yanne and Trintignant are both very good in their roles, but Kassovitz is even better, helped by the fact that he ends up where he is just because he is so eager to please. It’s a good job that these three leads are so good because the film rests on their shoulders. Other people pop in and out, but the focus always remains on that central triangle, even while they spend so much time not realising that they have been locked into shape since that fateful murder.

If you like the work of Audiard then this is recommended. Just be warned, however, that it isn’t up there with his best work, but that is because his best work sets a very high bar. There’s less to enjoy here in terms of visual style, nor is it the best score from Alexandre Desplat (a relatively early job for him, considering how large his body of work is), but the writing is strong enough to make up for those minor failings, and the cast serve it well.

7/10

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Mubi Monday: The Sisters Brothers (2018)

A bit of a change of pace for director Jacques Audiard, The Sisters Brothers is an enjoyable dark comedy Western that benefits immensely from two central performances from Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly.

The two play the titular brothers, men who end up on a quest to chase down two men (played by Riz Ahmed and Jake Gyllenhaal) who may be on to a winning formula for gold prospecting. They encounter difficulties along the way, of course, caused by people who want to end their lives, and the excessive drinking of Charlie.

Although featuring all of the usual things you expect to see in a Western, this is atypical in the way the characters are shown and the situations developed. Our two leads are not on some honourable quest, for example. They are being sent after men by a figure known as The Commodore (Rutger Hauer). Loyalties change, character flaws are not fixed in any major moment of redemption, and you never expect anyone to ride off into the sunset.

Reilly and Phoenix may not be two actors you would think of pairing up as brothers but both work really well in their roles, with the former being slightly in the shadow of the latter, although both can step up to the mark when guns need drawn and the bullets start flying. Ahmed is very good as the young man out to make his fortune with brains over toil, and Gyllenhaal is equally good as the man who does his best to stick close to him. You also get a good selection of supporting players, with enjoyable turns from Rebecca Root, Allison Tolman, and the smallest of roles for Carol Kane.

The script, co-written by Audiard and his frequent collaborator Thomas Bidegain (based on the novel of the same name by Patrick DeWitt), is strong. Characters are fleshed out very quickly, with more being added to them as the plot winds from beat to beat, and there are some cracking lines of dialogue (a favourite of mine being Phoenix talking to the citizens of a town named Mayfield).

The direction is also strong, as you may expect if you've seen anything else from Audiard. He keeps everything feeling firmly rooted in the genre while giving most scenes enough of a little twist to make it all feel slightly different from the norm and fresh. There's also some typically wonderful music throughout from Alexandre Desplat (another favourite collaborator of Audiard) and some nice cinematography throughout from Benoît Debie, making a lot of the more unpleasant moments seem more palatable.

8/10

Here's a disc.
And Americans can get it here.

A Prophet (2009)

Directed by Jacques Audiard (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Thomas Bidegain, based on the original incarnations of the tale by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit), A Prophet is an absolutely fantastic crime movie that mixes in some great characterisations with some Machiavellian moves, some moments of thoughtfulness with explosive violence and  equal amounts of hope and despair.

Tahar Rahim plays Malik El Djebana, a young Arab man who is sent to a French prison and tries to keep himself to himself. That doesn't last long, however, and once the head prisoner, Cesar (Niels Arestrup), asks him to do a job for him he is then dragged in to more and more schemes that involve him learning all about the criminal politics in and out of the prison. Malik watches and listens to everything and learns a hell of a lot, something that helps his self-preservation as the situation being created by Cesar and his underlings becomes increasingly dangerous.

It's a very traditional tale in many ways, the youngster who enters the criminal world and swiftly rises through the ranks while facing ever-increasing challenges and risks. What separates A Prophet from 101 other movies on the same subject is the way it nicely walks a line between something cinematic and something that feels very real. The other unique ingredient is the race of the lead character and how that feeds into the storyline, an essential factor in just how he can interact with certain groups and gain each foothold that he seeks.

The script is excellent and the direction from Jacques Audiard perfectly judged. Things move along at a brisk pace but there are tense scenes in which time slows right down, with every second vital as Malik weighs up his situation.

All of the cast do an excellent job. To honours go to Tahar Rahim but Niels Arestrup easily shares the top spot. Adel Bencherif, Jean-Philippe Ricci, and Slimane Dazi are also very good, along with absolutely everyone else who appears onscreen.

A Prophet is one of those movies that is actually quite hard to review in the blog format. I could either sum my feelings up for it in the first paragraph and leave it at that or I could explore every detail of the movie and create an essay going on for thousands of words but that's not the format for my blog so I'm going to settle for this middle ground with a review that I hope, as usual, gives enough information and "flavour" to people who may then check out the film and enjoy it for themselves.

9/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Prophet-Blu-ray/dp/B0036TGJX4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1346794016&sr=8-3