‘Emilia Pérez’ Is the Most Unique Cis Nonsense You’ll Ever See

This review of Emilia Pérez was originally published as part of our TIFF 2024 coverage.

I do not think only trans people can tell trans stories. Alice Júnior is one of my favorite trans movies, The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future is another. Veneno is not only one of my favorite trans shows but one of my favorite works of art in any medium ever.

I do not think only trans people can tell trans stories, but I’m curious when we will cease to be a metaphor. I’m curious when cis people who are fascinated enough to make movies about us will also be fascinated enough to learn anything about us.

There are many bad movies made by cis writers and directors about trans women. But you’ve never seen a bad movie about a trans woman like Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez.

And that’s something, right? Whether made by us or about us, I want more trans stories that are audacious, ambitious, and new. The problem with Emilia Pérez is that while it’s new in some ways it’s very, very tired in others.

The film hits just about every trans trope you can imagine:
1. Trans woman killer
2. Tragic trans woman
3. Trans woman abandons her wife and children to transition
4. Transition treated as a death
5. Deadnaming and misgendering at pivotal moments
6. Trans woman described as half male/half female

I’m not offended by anything on that list. It’s not about offense or something being not allowed. It’s that it’s boring. I don’t understand why a movie that’s so bonkers in other ways chooses to undercut its strengths with this shallow understanding of its titular character.

And it is bonkers in ways I enjoyed. The movie is a musical — an opera, really — about Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldana), an under-appreciated lawyer in Mexico who is granted a once in a lifetime opportunity when a drug kingpin (Karla Sofía Gascón) kidnaps her for an unusual request. She has secretly been on hormones for two years but for some reason despite an absurd amount of money and resources cannot access surgery. Enter Rita who finds her a surgeon willing to do what I’ll call a Skin I Live In aka a one-stop surgery shop where she gets FFS, top surgery, and bottom surgery all at once. (Yes there is a musical number where the word vaginoplasty is sung.) Rita also agrees to whisk away Emilia’s wife (Selena Gomez) as Emilia fakes her own death.

Where the film goes from this initial hook is an endless surprise and that’s one of the film’s true delights. Another is that Emilia has a romantic subplot with a woman unsubtly named Epifanía (Adriana Paz, the standout of the cast). Less delightful? Their romantic song begins with Emilia referring to herself as “half he, half she.”

This is the entire experience of the film. A wonderful awe is felt during a musical number or when the film allows its trans character to act in ways we rarely see on-screen. And then a line of dialogue will be said or a narrative choice will be made that feels at best an eye-roll and at worst a gut punch.

Emilia Pérez is a glorious disaster. Not since Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways has a trans film been so bold and so boring all at once. But it’s been over a decade since that film and my patience is waning. Certainly, this shallow understanding of trans people can’t still be interesting to cis people. How many times do cis people have to learn about us before a portrayal like this one rings as false to them as it does to me?

Ultimately, I’m not here to say what is realistic and what isn’t realistic. I am only one trans woman with my own set of experiences — none of which involve being a closeted drug kingpin. I will not say that Emilia’s understanding of herself is inaccurate. There are lots of different trans people in the world with lots of different trans experiences. But I’ve seen this one already. Not the drug kingpin part or the singing part, but the rest of it. And I’m so fucking bored. How can a movie with a vaginoplasty song feel this unoriginal?

On the surface, Emilia Pérez is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. But at its core, it holds an immense lack of curiosity. What appears to be a feast is really three-day old leftovers sitting out in decay.