The Tartan

Spoilers ahead for “Emilia Pérez.”

Lucas Hurley: Hey children, your Movie Mamas are back to discuss the new Netflix-produced, Oscar-lavished movie “Emilia Pérez.” The film centers around high-profile Mexican cartel boss Emilia Pérez who undergoes a covert sex-change operation and leaves her family behind. The latter half of the film explores Emilia creating an NGO to find civilians missing as a result of cartel violence and reconnecting with the family she abandoned.

Holly Wang: And this time, we might even agree on a thing or two, unlike our last disastrous conversation about “Anora.”

LH: I still get rage-fueled heart palpitations thinking about that. So, what do you think about the film?

HW: The story concept is certainly interesting. I like how it discusses themes like gender and sexuality and their relationship with power.

LH: I agree, and I can appreciate the boldness in centering a transgender character and actress in such a high-profile film. However, I don’t think the script was written with the tact the situation deserves. In terms of overall filmmaking, it’s competently done, but not worthy of being tied for the second most Oscar-nominated film in history with “The Lord of the Rings.”

HW: That’s a bold take! But I do agree that while the plot is very thought-provoking, and very refreshing to see on screen, the storytelling format prevents the film from being sensational. I think the musical medium is a distraction from the plot and some of the potential discourse. When I was watching the movie, I felt my focus was interrupted by most of the musical scenes.

LH: Yeah, there were many times we both burst out laughing when a character started singing. Something about how the scenes transitioned from speech to song felt inappropriate. I don’t think it being a musical is entirely without merit, however. A lot of the choreography was good, like during the main character Rita’s first song as she grapples with working for a corrupt law practice. But I don’t think the songwriting was very good — the lyrics lacked subtlety and creativity.

HW: Some of the songs became repetitive and melted together towards the end. I don’t have a lot of exposure to this form of storytelling, so I find it hard to appreciate.

LH: There was a particularly baffling moment where Emilia (still going by Manitas at the time) whisper-raps the terms of the deal for Rita to help arrange for her gender-affirming surgery to Rita for 30 seconds. It’s like, why is this happening? Why does this moment need to be a song?

HW: I definitely agree. Almost every single emotional scene in this movie is being told through a song, but that takes away from the viewing experience for me. Speaking of Emilia, I have a lot of feelings about that. I was surprised by the pronouns used in this movie. Even though Emilia/Manitas came out to Rita in the RV, Rita continued to use “he” to refer to her. It was only after the actual physical transition that people around Emilia started using she/her pronouns.

LH: That was something that particularly bothered me. It seems the ideology of the movie is that transgender people are valid, but they can only be the gender that their physical body projects. This is complicated by the fact that characters do at times still refer to her as “he” after she comes out and physically transitions. In the end, Selena Gomez’s character Jessi states “My husband is in the trunk.” Like I suppose it sort of makes sense since her character recently realized that Emilia was Manitas, but I don’t think anyone would have given it a second thought if she had just said “wife.”

HW: I think Jessi referring to Emilia as “her husband” makes sense to me. Because she does not have as much information as we the audience have about Emilia’s life. It was also a very emotionally charged time; she was in the car with her lover, who kidnapped Emilia and even chopped off her fingers! I can sort of cut this woman a bit of slack there. This does not mean I think it’s right to do that, but I think it makes sense story-wise for her to call Emilia “my husband.”

LH: But this is fiction, not a documentary. This is a pervasive issue — the writers concoct scenarios where it technically makes sense for characters to be misgendering and deadnaming Emilia constantly. The entire movie is in their hands — they could have just written a different story.

HW: This leads me to consider if there is an explicit reason why they choose the pronouns they do. It’s clear from the way they describe Emilia’s “past life” before her transition that the writers want the audience to see both of those lives as separate entities, like different people. 

LH: That definitely seems to be the movie’s position, but I think this perceived “duality” of pre- and post-transition is dumb and inconsistent with the way transgender people tend to talk about their lives. One is the same person before and after gender-affirming surgery, it’s just that now their exterior body reflects their interior life better. There’s not much more to it. 

HW: This also gives the illusion that Emilia post-transition is not still morally responsible for all of her actions from when she was a cartel leader, since the storytelling is actively telling us to view them as different people.

LH: Her moral culpability definitely could have been developed more. Can one redeem themselves outside of the carceral system without taking accountability? Can a person who’s hidden their identity from their family and abandoned them over insecurity rekindle that relationship? The movie doesn’t fully contend with these questions — Emilia and Jessi just end up dying in a fiery, melodramatic explosion. It felt like a convenient sidestep so the film didn’t have to unravel all the complexities it set up.

HW: That is the part I take issue with in this movie too. I feel like because the writers desperately want us to separate Emilia before and after the transition, the moral pondering of “Does redemption even work?” gets lost in that. I think it’s humorous how hypocritical some of the parts are. Emilia founded an NGO to use her connections with incarcerated cartel members to help uncover the bodies of victims. But these connections would not have been so established if she was not the one in power within that system, before her transition. It’s hard for me not to suspect that she is partially morally responsible for these people’s deaths or that she might have not killed them directly, but maybe sent orders to, or has been okay with.

LH: I do think the movie is aware of this hypocrisy, it just doesn’t ultimately do anything with it. There is some real darkness to Emilia’s character that would be intriguing to explore, but it is ultimately uncharted territory.

HW: I wish there could be a conflict scene between Emilia and Rita, or maybe even Epifanía, Emilia’s girlfriend. Maybe they are pointing out this redemption arc and its hypocrisy. I feel like Rita is such an aware person, of corruption and other societal phenomena in the film, it’s surprising in a bad way to me that she does not seem to have any opinions about Emilia’s NGO.

LH: There are certainly other things to talk about, like the controversial use of Respeecher to help Emilia’s actress reach notes of a higher register and the pushback the film has received for its perceived lack of Mexican representation. But perhaps we are not the best equipped to discuss those issues. In any case, the Mamas have to pick the kids up from school, so we’ll end it here.