In a year filled with movie musicals of both the Broadway and DC Comics variety, no musical has provoked more discussion and Oscar buzz that “Emilia Pérez.” Jacques Audiard’s operatic transformational cartel saga dazzled and polarized Cannes audiences in equal measure, with IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio writing that “you’ve never seen a movie musical at all about transness that takes as bold of swings.” The film went on to play at Telluride and Toronto film festivals before opening in select theaters this month. With its status as a major award season player firmly cemented, the film is now available for Netflix subscribers to stream.
Now, IndieWire can exclusively debut the clip of one of the film’s buzziest songs, Zoe Saldaña‘s blistering performance of the anti-cartel screed “El Mal.”
“Emilia Pérez” stars Karla Sofía Gascón as a leader of the Mexican cartel seeking to disappear in order to receive gender reassignment surgery and leave her criminal past behind. Saldaña and Selena Gomez co-star as her defense attorney and wife, respectively.
In a recent interview with IndieWire, Audiard explained that the musical elements of the film were key to telling a story with such layered political and social context.
“The operatic way of thinking led to a certain stylization which is still in the DNA of the project,” Audiard said. “There’s always a social or existential tragedy behind it, which makes it all worthwhile. So you have a country that is falling apart, or you have people that are not well in their own skin. So the musical comedy style helps carry that through musical drama, where singing and dancing do play a role. Because when you write a standard script, you start out, you have a setup, you have a few pages of that, and then the plot moves forward. But when all of a sudden, you have a song that breaks out, within a second, you hit the emotion immediately, you understand the meaning. There’s an efficacy that a standard script would not grant you.”
“Emilia Pérez” is now streaming on Netflix. Watch the clip of “El Mal,” an IndieWire exclusive, below.
