Emilia Perez

Emilia Perez has been talked about a lot lately, and not necessarily because of the film itself. Some controversial statements were made by a Mexican actor about Selena Gomez’ Spanish in the film and she got dumped on. The statements that he made could not at all be considered constructive criticism, he was straight up hostile. Selena fans then attacked him in turn. Now as someone whose Mexican family is fully colonized, I don’t speak Spanish, I can mostly understand if you talk to me slowly but that’s all I’ve got. All that said regardless of how you felt about her Spanish in the movie, any ire you feel should be directed at the writing and the very French director. Selena didn’t make word choices. So let’s get into Emilia Perez.

First of all super didn’t know it was a musical…would have been the first movie I watched had I known that. Second of all Zoe Saldana can sing? Amazing. Love her. So she is now working for a drug lord who wants a full sex change operation.

A lot of the criticism of Selena Gomez was that her inflection wasn’t right for what she was saying and everything fell flat. As a non-Spanish speaker I don’t hear that at all. I think y'all were just expecting Selena to be something she’s not. She is an incredible actress but her delivery is exactly what she’s known for. Not sure why some of you were expecting different. I will say that some of her inflection sounded how it would if she were saying it in English, which I suppose could be a problem. Selena’s acting however is incredible, that is undeniable. She is truly phenomenal. But also her character is from the states, moved to Mexico and then moved to Switzerland where she obviously wasn’t using her Spanish as much so I’m really not sure why y'all wanted her to sound like a native Spanish speaker when that was the opposite of who her character was supposed to be.

The act structure is really solid. After the transition we get a 4 years later title card and that is the very obvious end to act one. Rita and Emilia’s reunification is the start of act 2. Emilia wants her children back in Mexico. She didn’t anticipate that her children didn’t want to be there. They are used to Switzerland and they liked it, as did Jessi.

So far I really love the pacing, nothing is lingering for too long and the plot is moving at a nice clip.

One of her babies recognizes his smell. Emilia really starts struggling with their past decisions after that interaction. It was incredibly sad, because this poor child thinks that his father is dead and not laying right next to him.

Emilia attempts to atone for her past crimes by helping families that lost someone to the cartels locate and identify their loved ones.

I think one of the most emotional scenes of the movie was Jessi finding out who Emilia really is. Selena’s performance was incredible and she deserves all the praise that she’s been getting.

Zoe Saldana was truly freaking incredible. She gave one of the best performances of the year and Rita. Some of the music could have been executed better by the vocalists but Zoe’s songs were truly the best parts of the movie. I loved the story and thought it was interesting and compelling the entire time. The structure was clear and the pacing was done well. More than anything it was interesting. From the story to the fact that it was a musical Emilia Perez did something incredibly rare and wonderful. A full and very easy 10/10.