The Big Picture

“Emilia Pérez” wowed Cannes with genre-defying blend of soap opera, musical comedy, and narcos film.
Director Audiard thrives on change, shunning genre labels to create unique and fluid cinematic experiences.
Selena Gomez charms her way into Audiard’s film, impressing with her performance and dedication to the role.

Cannes Film Festival alum and writer-director Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone) stirred up quite a buzz at this year’s festival for his latest genre-defying feature, Emilia Pérez. The world premiere garnered an 11-minute standing ovation and is currently being eyed by Netflix, but it’s something of an enigma when you lay out all the elements that make it unforgettable. For starters, the movie is led by Zoë Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Karla Sofía Gascón in what Audiard describes as a “soap opera and a musical comedy,” as well as a “narcos film” — drugs, drama, and dance numbers.

Inspired by a mere mention in a chapter of Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute, Audiard expanded Emilia Pérez into a story about a cartel drug lord, played by Gascón, who seeks the help of Rita (Saldaña), a lawyer who specializes in narco-related cases. Manitas wants to disappear in order to transition into their true identity as a woman and make amends for the damage done by the cartel, and it’s all played out in the original musical numbers.

During this exclusive interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Audiard explains why it’s impossible to pin him down as a specific genre filmmaker. He talks about his previous films, like The Sisters Brothers starring Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly and Dheepan, which earned a Palme d’or in 2015, and why his films change so drastically in the edit. The director also shares what it was about Gomez, who plays the wife of Emilia prior to her transition, that signaled to him she was the right person for the role.

You can read the full interview in the transcript below.

Emilia Perez (2024) Mexico, today. Lawyer Rita receives an unexpected offer. She has to help a feared cartel boss retire from his business and disappear forever by becoming the woman he’s always dreamed of being.Release Date August 28, 2024 Director Jacques Audiard Runtime 130 Minutes Main Genre Crime Writers Thomas Bidegain , Léa Mysius , Jacques Audiard Studio(s) Why Not Productions , Saint Laurent , Page 114 , Pathé , France 2 Cinéma , Pimienta Films , The Veterans

COLLIDER: You have done a number of movies. If someone has never seen anything you’ve directed before, what is the first thing you’d like them to watch first and why?

JACQUES AUDIARD: Le Prophète.

Is there a specific reason you want them to start with that?

AUDIARD: Because it’s, I think, my fourth film, and it’s the one that sums up what I learned in the three previous films. I discovered new things while making that one, and then I did different things.

Jacques Audiard Has No Patience for One Genre
The award-winning director has tackled Westerns, crime dramas, romance and more.

One of the things about your career is that you don’t spend the same time in any one genre. You jump from story to story, and they’re all so different. Is that a conscious choice?

AUDIARD: I think that it’s not a specific ability, it’s just curiosity, and it’s my lack of patience that prompts me to do so. I need something new all the time, something different, or at least I need it to feel different because maybe you would recognize themes from one film to the other. There are so many directors in France, men and women, that are very recognizable, and they have a sort of trademark in their films. That is not for me. That sort of utter label that it is placed on them, that is not for me. I need to make films in order to distance myself. I need to disappear behind my films in a certain way.

I am a fan of your work, and I love talking about the editing process because it’s where it all comes together. Which of your films changed the most in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect going in?

AUDIARD: I change everything. I was an editor before going behind the camera, and to me, the editing is a sort of prolonging the writing, the screenplay. It allows you to do a lot of changes. I think about editing when I’m shooting the film, I think about it when I’m writing the film. Once I have all the material that I need, all the footage, then I can be a bit iconoclastic, so to speak. And an example of that is Read My Lips, which is a film that is completely different from the way I wrote it. The final result, what it turned out to be, wasn’t the screenplay in any way.

I thought Emilia Pérez was fantastic. I loved it.

AUDIARD: Thank you.

What was it about this material and this story that said, “I have to make this?”

AUDIARD: Everything came to my mind. The opportunity was a chapter in a novel, but then I developed the whole story. And in relation to what we were saying before, in this case, due to the fact that there were songs and music and choreography, I couldn’t change as much as I normally do because I was bound by that. My choice was to cap the length of the song and of the music, or not to put it in the film.

Image via Cannes Film Festival

I think the songs are so great, and I’m curious, did you end up with songs that didn’t make the film, or was every song that was written in the movie? I’m always curious about what didn’t make it.

AUDIARD: I think two if I remember correctly. But one, I’m sure.

A lot of people are talking about whether this is a French movie or this is a Mexican movie. Where is this movie considered from?

AUDIARD: From space. It comes from nowhere, from space. From outer space.

[Laughs] But do you consider this a French movie?

AUDIARD: As much as I don’t like to appear as Jacques Audiard, I like to somehow delete myself in the film, I like [the films] to be undefined. We don’t know where they come from and where they’re going. They just blur, undefined. I made a film a long time ago, which was Dheepan, and it was in Tamil — it got the Golden Palm, by the way — and I made another film which was a cowboy film, a Western, The Sisters Brothers, and I don’t speak English, so it has no flag. I don’t speak Spanish.

This is a testament to your talent that you can work in languages you don’t speak and you can still have it be so effective.

AUDIARD: Exactly.

You obviously have premiered, I think, everything at Cannes. Do you have an honorary apartment here? Have they given you a flat? Because you basically live here for certain times of the year.

AUDIARD: I have no wish to live in Cannes despite the fact that all my films were presented here and were awarded. I was offered a hotel, and as for the apartment, I refused.

How Genre Plays an Important Role in ‘Emilia Pérez’
Image via Cannes Film Festival

Emilia Pérez is getting great reviews, and people genuinely love it. In my opinion, this movie has the possibility of going off the rails 10 different ways, but it never does. It is a fantastic film dealing with so much subject matter. When did you realize, “Oh, this might be a special film?”

AUDIARD: My intention, as I was saying, was about the transition identity, which was the chapter in the novel that gave me the idea for this film. I wanted the film to be set in Mexico, which I believe is a bit of a schizophrenic country, and these two elements, somehow the transition of Manitas Del Monte was Emilia Pérez, the change of gender was to be matched, in my opinion, with a change in the genre. Because I wanted it to be a soap opera and a musical comedy, a narcos film, something where you could not really grasp a label, something that was still very fluid. I really tried to do that in a film that was selected in Cannes, a drama that kept on changing and not being labeled.

Selena Gomez Charmed ‘Emilia Pérez’ Director at an NYC Café
Image via Cannes Film Festival

Selena Gomez is a part of your film. She does a fantastic job. One of the things about casting her is that there are a lot of people in America, specifically, that love her. How conscious were you in casting her?

AUDIARD: I was completely unaware of it. I’m not familiar at all with this social network, Instagram, TikTok generation. I have no access to all of that. I knew her from Spring Breakers and the Woody Allen film she played in, [A Rainy Day in New York]. I just wanted to work with her for that. And when I met her in New York one morning in a cafe, I just knew instantly that I wanted to work with her.

I’ve been asking everyone recently if they have a favorite Stanley Kubrick movie.

AUDIARD: All of them. Lately, it was Barry Lyndon, but I think I’m going to change and re-watch them all. I want to go back to the source, 2001 [A Space Odyssey]. You can’t see it that often because that’s very long, but I think I saw it 12 times.

I have this conversation with many filmmakers. For me, 2001 is my favorite, purely because of what he accomplished in the ‘60s, making that movie and making you believe you were in space.

AUDIARD: It’s the last great masterpiece film of the analogic era.

But you can make the argument that all of his films are the best.

Image via MGM

How recently did you wrap Emilia Pérez, and do you already know what you want to do next?

AUDIARD: I wrapped three weeks ago. Paris, 13th District, my previous film, was my next project, but I shot it, and it’s done already. [Laughs]

Check out Collider for more from Cannes Film Festival 2024.