'Emilia Pérez' review: Intelligent drama wrapped in audacious musical

WHAT IT’S ABOUT In Mexico City, the ruthless cartel leader Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón) offers a low-paid lawyer named Rita (Zoe Saldaña) a chance to become rich. All Rita must do is help Manitas flee the country and live a respectable life — as a transgender woman. When her shock wears off, Rita agrees, but her decision sets off a chain of events that will alter the lives of everyone involved.

MY SAY Gender isn’t the only malleable notion in "Emilia Pérez." Here’s a movie that’s many things at once: a French-produced drama with nuanced characters, a Spanish-language crime thriller and — as if that weren’t enough — a musical. That’s right, these characters dance, sing and occasionally rap as they play out a story that touches on themes of wealth, justice, morality and fate. A bit much, you say? Well, that’s the point. "Emilia Pérez" is essentially a 21st-century opera, which is how writer-director Jacques Audiard initially envisioned it.

The musical numbers are nothing if not stylistically diverse. (The score and songs are by film composer Clément Ducol and the singer Camille, longtime collaborators.) Rita’s opening number, "Alegato," is a classic "I want" song, but delivered in a rough, almost rap-rock style while a dance troupe of Mexico City denizens performs behind her. (The choreography, choppily modern rather than classically elegant, is by Damien Jalet.) Manitas’ new incarnation, Emilia Pérez, tackles mostly lyrical ballads but also, at a climactic moment, a sobbing aria. There’s even a hospital whose staffers sing joyously while wheeling patients on gurneys. You can almost hear Baz Lurhmann groaning with envy.

For all that, it’s the quieter moments that have the most impact. Something about Rita sticks in our craw: After all, her new designer clothes and dinners on the Rive Gauche were purchased with a mass murderer’s money. And how do we feel about Emilia herself? To live her authentic life, she gives up her wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and their children. She also spends her riches atoning for Manitas’ crimes, then falls in love with Epifanía (Adriana Paz), a woman searching for a vanished victim of cartel violence. Throughout this morally tricky film, Audiard carefully (and bravely) walks a line, respecting Emilia’s transgender journey without letting her completely off the hook for her sins.

If Gascón becomes the first openly transgender person to win a Best Actress Oscar (she won the equivalent at Cannes), it would be well-deserved. A Spanish veteran of telenovelas, Gascón is terrific as both the menacing Manitas and the maternal Emilia, and we can see the core self that resides in each. Saldaña, another possible Oscar contender, deftly switches from song to spoken dialogue to dance number without batting an eye. Oddly, it’s Gomez — a chart-topping pop star — who has the least to do here as the emotionally erratic Jessi.

In other hands, "Emilia Pérez" could have been a campy farce or, worse, a "message movie." But Audiard, known for character-driven dramas like 2012’s "Rust and Bone," is too grounded for that. In a scene that feels like this movie’s statement of purpose, Rita and Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir) hotly debate the very idea of gender-affirming surgery — in a duet, of course. "Changing the body changes the soul," Rita sings, but Wasserman, to her surprise, disagrees. Male or female, he replies, won’t change what’s inside. "My door," he warns, "is not God’s door."

BOTTOM LINE An intelligent drama wrapped in an audacious musical.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman