All eight years of French I took in grade school finally paid off, because I got to watch “Johanne Sacreblu” on the big screen in Baker Hall A51 and pretend I understood what was happening.
So, there’s this movie. Not sure if you’ve heard of it, it flew mostly under the radar, but it’s called “Emilia Pérez.” On Wikipedia, it’s listed as a “Spanish-Language French Musical Crime Film,” which is the funniest word salad I’ve seen in a very long time. It is, at the same time, an incredible film because it manages to be everything I’ve ever wanted in a cinema. I feel the need to use an image to explain. You see, there’s this chart I use to describe how I see movies:
This chart isn’t my invention; it came to me via a good friend who almost certainly stole it from some random guy on the internet, but it represents how much I enjoy something based on how good it is. On the far right, we have movies that I enjoy because they’re just good damn movies. It’s stuff like “Saving Private Ryan,” the original “Jumanji,” or “Paddington 2.” It’s a movie that’s fun to watch because it’s good. These aren’t 10/10s by any means — there are plenty of movies that fit this category and are, like, sixes at best. Yet sometimes when you’re really bored, a six looks like a 10. Kids, that’s the story of how my best friend and I watched “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” four times in a row, stone-cold sober.
Then we have the category of movies that are just plain, old boring. They don’t do enough to be interesting and they don’t do anything interesting well. These are the sort of movies that wind up just being safe, shameless cash grabs — they’re the eighth Hallmark movie your mother forces you to watch in the lead-up to Christmas, or whatever it is The Rock thinks passes for cinema these days. Seriously, the man saw that his new piece-of-trash flick, “RED ONE” got 50 million viewers and said, “‘RED ONE’ has a very long shelf life with multiple verticals.” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN DWAYNE? TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE VERTICALS DWAYNE. HOW MANY VERTICALS DOES YOUR MOVIE NEED BEFORE IT GETS A SOUL DWAYNE.
They’re not anger issues if the anger is justified, right?
Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The category I want to focus on is the very low-quality movies that I find insanely enjoyable. These are the ones that make me the happiest because man, the directors are trying SO hard and they’re just SO. BAD. This is the world of bad B-movies and miserable flicks made by cash-strapped visionaries who think giving the guys steroids and the girls lingerie will get them hired by some big studio to direct something big. They’re not good. They’re not just bad, they’re spectacularly bad. It’s also the realm of such beautiful disasters like “Riverdale,” and now, “Emilia Pérez.”
Emilia Pérez was made by a French guy who didn’t know anything about Spanish. Not much at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure he described Spanish as “a language of modest countries, of developing countries, of the poor and migrants.”
So, of course, because I am a Good Journalist, and Good Journalists get sources, I dragged my good friend Kevin Keene (Self-proclaimed “not-a-critic” by day, critic by night), and we started doing our research.
Seriously, what is going on in the French cinematic universe right now? The guy didn’t go to Mexico, he didn’t try to learn anything about Mexico, and instead labored under the assumption that his random backwater spot in France was a good enough approximation. At least throw a yellow filter on it and some crappy mariachi. That’s what Kevin did at his birthday and he said it was, and I quote, “almost like the real thing!”
Still, not the point of this article, because the point of this article is that some people saw “Emilia Pérez,” realized it was the worst thing to have come out of France since their last cultural export, and decided to have a little fun by making their own musical. A French-language Spanish Musical Crime Film. And that incredible little invention is “Johanne Sacreblu,” and it is glorious.
It opens on a scene that looks vaguely French, with subtitles (sous-titres, for all you francophones out there) that are Spanish. The French speaking isn’t French, or if it is, it’s atrocious. I’m no Francophile myself, but I know what French sounds like, and this is so bad. After showing something vaguely Japanese and the pyramids (which the movie proudly proclaims are “Part of the Real France”) we start our first song.
They’re all dressed in mime clothing with pencil mustaches. I can’t take this anymore — this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Please go watch “Johanne Sacreblu.” It’s a half-hour on YouTube and you don’t need to know Spanish; it’s just entertaining.
I completely stopped being able to understand “Johanne Sacreblu” about three minutes in, when someone started talking about baguettes and beignets, then saying what I can only barely translate as, “Look at my rat, I like drinking wine.” The Greek chorus singing “Croissant, croissant, croissant!” feels so perfectly on point for a production that imagines a French person in their mind and then puts it on screen. The “Franish” is also amazing — corazón isn’t a French word — and the random cultural references to things that are unrelated to the song (Mbappe) or not even French remind us exactly how bad of a stereotype this is. I didn’t understand most of it, but Kevin spent the whole time giggling uncontrollably. Apparently, I was wrong about the rat — it just smelled like wine. He did clarify a lot of the jokes that I missed, but he pointed out that the vibes were oftentimes more than enough to communicate the gag.
Where things get … complicated is when the movie takes on some of the other themes of Emilia Pérez, like the entire transgender plotline that “Emilia Pérez” focuses on. But, at the very least, I do feel better knowing that the transgender character has a mustache not because the director is transphobic, but because everyone in France has a mustache, and that’s just the way things are. From what I can gather, the movie is accepting, but I’m going off of body language and random guesses, and, in the spirit of Jacques Audiard, I don’t plan on doing any more research.
The flick is absolutely helped by my complete inability to parse any of it. The random rats (which I think are a reference to “Ratatouille”), and the once-in-a-while French and Spanish words (Guacamole? Baguette? Eclair?) are hilarious. I know this is a mix of Spanish and French, but they manage to make this an enjoyable experience if you can just sort of speak one language, which is more than I can say for Emilia Pérez. And if you can speak both? Strap in, this stuff is an absolute artistic masterpiece.
I don’t want to spoil any more, but I cannot recommend this video nearly enough. Sure it’s a bit rough around the edges, and I feel like it’s a lot funnier if you go in blind. The number of rats keeps increasing, there are mimes everywhere, and I’m pretty sure La Miraculous Ladybug shows up for a cameo. I spent the entire time wheezing. Ultimately, “Johanne Sacreblu” is a gorgeous cinematographic masterpiece with incredible dialogue, themes of love, acceptance, and baguettes, and is a masterpiece coming from the mind of Camila D. Aurora, who many are calling the next Martin Scorcese. I expect 13 Oscar wins.
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