Jacques Audiard has never made two films alike, with each new endeavor a completely new exploration of entirely new genres and experiences. From making one of the greatest crime dramas of the 21st century with A Prophet, creating a Western dramedy in The Sisters Brothers, or a unique take on the romantic drama with Rust and Bone, Audiard always makes sure each film is unlike what you’ve seen from him before. While Audiard usually seems to latch onto a specific new genre and try to master it, his latest, Emilia Pérez, is arguably his most ambitious film so far, one that refuses to fit into a particular box, a musical drug cartel drama with a transgender affirmation story, all blended with a melodramatic telenovela style. No one would ever say Audiard isn’t daring, and Emilia Pérez is certainly a strong example of this, yet despite three strong female lead performances—including one of the best of the year—it’s a film that bites off more than it can effectively chew.

What Is ‘Emilia Pérez’ About?

Rita (Zoe Saldaña) is a lawyer for a major law firm, yet is under-appreciated in her job, assisting her teammates while not getting any of the credit. After a mysterious phone call one day, she is kidnapped and brought to meet a Mexican cartel leader, Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascón) who needs her help. Manitas wants to leave the country and have sex reassignment surgery, a desire had since childhood. Manitas wants Rita to find the best place to do this major life change quickly and effectively, but also have Manitas’ wife, Jessi Del Monte (Selena Gomez), and their children set up for a life without their father and husband. But even after Rita succeeds at helping Manitas become Emilia Pérez (also played by Gascón) and moving Jessi’s family to Switzerland, Rita, Emilia, and Jessi are intertwined in ways they never expected.

Audiard wisely centers this film around these three fantastic female performances, each of which is daring and surprising in its own way. Despite finding massive success at the box office, we’ve never seen Saldaña so free and playful as we do here, with many of the bigger, bombastic musical numbers centered around her. Her opening number sets up the wild shifts in styles that Audiard is going for, and some of the broader songs allow her to really strap in and have a blast. One sequence has Saldaña’s Rita singing in a plastic surgery office to a song called “La Vaginoplastia,” while another has her gyrating and mocking throwing money at rich people. With these three stories intersecting, Saldaña has the most opportunities to let loose and embrace the over-the-top nature of Audiard’s vision fully, and it’s a delight to see Saldaña get a role like this that she can truly sink her teeth into.

The same can be said about Selena Gomez’s Jessi, which gives the actress one of her most mature performances yet, as she’s thrown into a role at extremes. Jessi begins as Manitas’ wife, then goes to mourning her husband, followed by changing her life’s situation, then potentially falling for another man with a questionable background (Édgar Ramírez as Gustavo Brun). Gomez may not get quite the same amount of attention that the other two actresses receive, yet she makes the most of this rich role in the moments we do focus on her.

Karla Sofia Gascón Gives a Star-Making Performance in ‘Emilia Pérez’
Image via Netflix

But the real standout here is Gascón in a remarkable performance of discovery, struggle, and becoming who Manitas was always meant to be. Even though Emilia Pérez is playing with melodrama and grand ideas—especially in her segments of the film—Gascón always grounds the role of the title character with strength, reserve, and subtle power over everything. As Manitas, Gascón is an intimidating figure who gets what they want, and when the transformation to Emilia Pérez is complete, we still feel the power they hold, even though the character is trying to distance themselves from their cartel past. Again, Gascón is thrown into many larger-than-life situations and story beats, but excels at all of them. We know the pain that this character can inflict, but we also see the love and care Pérez has in this new phase of her life. Especially when Gascón interacts with her children in the film as Emilia, the film finds a touching emotional core that centers this often wild story into something real and heartbreaking. Gascón plants this film into very honest emotions and concepts, and gives a commanding performance that will go down as one of the year’s best.

‘Emilia Pérez’ Might Be Too Ambitious For Its Own Good
Image via Netflix

And yet, it’s the overabundance of ideas within Audiard’s latest that holds this film back, attempting to do a lot, and spreading itself too thin. Emilia Pérez is the first film Audiard has written on his own, a story which began as a four-act opera libretto, and was loosely based on the 2018 novel “Écoute” from Boris Razon. It’s impossible not to admire how daring Audiard’s story is, with a narrative that will shift and evolve into something else every 15 minutes or so. But because of that, Emilia Pérez can sometimes feel more like a genre deconstruction and attempt to flow so many different types of films together in a way that never quite becomes cohesive. As previously stated, Audiard has always tried something new with each subsequent film, but with Emilia Pérez, it’s like he wants to try that same level of ambitious genre-hopping every few minutes.

This, unfortunately, mostly hurts the musical side of the film. There are large stretches of Emilia Pérez that are without songs, almost as if Audiard has forgotten he’s attempting a musical. When the film is a musical, songs often stop and start without leaving much of an impact, and sadly, the songs by Camille and score by Clément Ducol are mostly forgettable. There are some exceptions, as with the emotional “Papa,” in which Pérez’s son sings to her about his deceased father, and the staging of the musical sequences are always impressive. But when they’re done extremely well and the songs are hitting just right, it only highlights how often the musical elements seem almost like an afterthought. For a film so daring and inventive, it’s disappointing that the musical aspect of Emilia Pérez never soars to meet this film’s ambitions.

As an always exciting auteur who has deserved more attention for decades, Emilia Pérez is an excellent calling card for Audiard, a film that truly spotlights everything he’s capable of doing as a remarkable director. Audiard has also thrived at getting incredible performances out of actors, such as Tahar Rahim’s breakthrough in A Prophet, one of Marion Cotillard’s finest achievements in Rust and Bone, and Antonythasan Jesuthasan’s powerful performance in the Palme d’Or-winning Dheepan, and he continues this trend with this brilliant trio of Saldaña, Gomez, and Gascón, each of which should deservedly receive attention come award season. But Audiard’s attempt to pack this story with so many directions and ideas doesn’t always coalesce into a satisfying whole, exploring the absurdities of melodrama and Mexican telenovelas effectively, but cramming to many other styles in as well. Emilia Pérez is doing a lot and often doing it quite well, but not all of these pieces fit together as well as they should.

Emilia Pérez screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. It’s available to stream on Netflix in the U.S. starting November 13.

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