Jacques Audiard enchants the Cannes Film Festival with “Emilia Perez” | EUROtoday

IYou must be daring like Jacques Audiard to enterprise into the territory of the musical thriller, which right here flirts with pure melodrama and Brazilian telenovela. What he does brilliantly in his new movie, Emilia Perez, which supplies a superb increase to the Cannes choice the place he’s competing.

Festival common, Grand Prix for A prophet (2009) and Palme d’Or for Dheepan (2015), the filmmaker strikes simply from western (The Brothers Sisters2018) and the sentimental chronicle within the towers of 18^e district of Paris (The Olympics) to the arid landscapes of Mexico the place he went to shoot this story “Of violence/Of love/Of Death/Of a country that suffers”, in Spanish and English.

A cartel chief in transition

Here we’re in Mexico, a teeming megalopolis that now not even counts its inhabitants. Rita is a younger and good lawyer, exploited by her boss for whom she prepares the information of his shoppers, most of them corrupt, even murderers. One of them even killed his spouse, however the suicide concept was accepted. One day, on his mobile phone, there’s a male voice who forces him to go to a gathering.

She is straight away kidnapped and introduced earlier than a formidable and feared drug trafficker, Manitas, who presents her some huge cash in alternate for a daunting service, serving to her to what he at all times wished to be: a lady. Rita accepts with out considering and organizes all the things: the seek for a discreet surgeon and the exfiltration of Manitas' spouse, who’s unaware of his mission, and their two youngsters to Switzerland. The journey begins for this cartel chief able to tackle this transition, synonymous for him with a brand new life, even when he isn’t certain of seeing his household once more. He pretends to be lifeless and turns into Emilia Perez.

READ ALSO “Megalopolis”, “Furiosa”, “The Second Act”: our unmissable highlights from the 2024 Cannes Film FestivalFour years later, Rita, who has grow to be a world lawyer in London, meets Manitas/Emilia by probability, who asks her for one more service: to arrange her return to Mexico. On website, on this nation prey to kidnapping, corruption, hundreds of deaths sown by the settling of scores between cartels, and the place moms desperately seek for their lacking sons by distributing leaflets, Emilia, touched by grace, decides to assist them by establishing a voluntary affiliation, La Lucetita (the little gentle).

Priority for ladies

A type of redemption that transfigures his life and that of Rita, who organizes for Emilia the repatriation of his spouse, Jessica, and their two youngsters. To the latter, she is “Aunt Emi”. But for his spouse, the scenario seems to be advanced. How can the latter think about that she is dealing with her husband?

With such a twists and turns state of affairs, co-written along with his confederate Thomas Bidegain (A prophet, Rust and bone And Dheepan), Jacques Audiard units the tone, the tempo. From the opening of the movie, it catches us with a collection of scenes sung and danced by Rita/Zoe Saldaña, as in a musical Latin American sauce. The course of has a knack for stretching the dramatic arc and giving it a lot of rhythm. The key’s a bias: ladies have the main position right here in a rustic identified for being macho.

READ ALSO Cannes: Greta Gerwig, the president who thrills the CroisetteThe actress and dancer Zoe Saldaña (the Neytiri ofAvatar) brings all his power to his character whose emotions and feelings are amplified by the melodies of the singer Camille and her companion, Clément Ducol. The presence of the choirs, in a choreography by Damien Jalet, electrifies the scenes of Mexican life. Lived or dreamed, they’re imbued with this “magical realism” illustrated by the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, like this tune by Brassens, “Les Passantes”, performed by a brass band throughout a procession for “Saint Emilia”.

In this position, the actress Karla Sofia Gascon precisely performs the duality of her character, she who was a person earlier than her transformation in 2018. No doubt pushed by her expertise, she provides Emilia a mysterious attraction, between violence and love, shared between ephemeral happiness, opposite emotions and the heartbreak of being confronted along with his personal spouse. To the latter, the actress and dancer Selena Gomez, of Mexican origin, brings all of the power, the despair of a personality who feels deserted and betrayed, with out actually realizing find out how to rebuild her life. We are right here in the midst of melodrama, a style that has flourished in Hollywood.

READ ALSO “Megalopolis”: in Cannes, Francis Ford Coppola presents his free kamikaze fableVenezuelan actor Édgar Ramirez (Steven Soderbergh's Che and Carlos from Olivier Assayas' miniseries) and Spaniard Adriana Paz full the stable solid of this movie which, on a fragile topical topic, avoids the pitfalls of sentimentality, proselytism and clichés, to easily rejoice the style for all times. Jacques Audiard wins his possibilities of showing on the record.