Emilia Perez (Jacques Audiard, 2024, France/Mexico/Belgium)

It's difficult to review Emilia Perez on its own merits, without discussing the controversies surrounding the film. It is hard to name a film in recent memory that had a more spectacular fall than this one - from Netflix banking on it to become an Oscar frontrunner, to being uniformly despised across all corners of the Internet. Emilia seemed to do the impossible and generate a backlash from both the right and left, from both the cultural gatekeepers and the normal Netflix viewer. The controversy surrounding some old tweets from lead actress Karla Sofia Gascon was just the icing on the cake.

But what about the film itself? Is it as godawful as some people would have you believe? Well, not precisely. Had the film not been as hyped as it was, it probably would have arrived and gone without much attention. Sure, the film's genre-blending - musical, telenovela, cartel movie - is unique (despite the songs themselves being hardly memorable or well-written). There is some interest in the performances, even the ones that have been lambasted (Selena Gomez). The film opens strongly enough but becomes something of a slog by the second hour.

The issue is not so much the subject matter, but rather an issue of tone. There is clearly a camp sensibility to this material, but director Jacques Audiard is either not embracing it strongly enough, or he really wants to move us with this film. There are so many absurdities present that the film might have been better off as a pure camp exercise. The end result feels like it is trying to be sincere, but it hasn't earned that sincerity. That's not to say the film is a formal or technical disaster - far from it. It just leaves us unfulfilled and wanting something more.

5/10