One of the splashiest and most divisive movies coming out of Cannes Film Festival this year was Jacques Audiard’s musical crime comedy Emilia Perez, which stars Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, and Édgar Ramírez. Picking up the Jury Prize as well as the Best Actress award for its female ensemble, Netflix acquired it for U.S. and U.K. distribution but first it’ll arrive in France this August and they’ve debuted the first trailer.
Emilia Pérez follows the story of Rita (Saldaña), an overqualified and undervalued lawyer at a large firm that is more interested in getting criminals off the hook than bringing them to justice. One day, she is given an unexpected way out, when cartel leader Manitas (Gascón) hires her to help him withdraw from his business and realize a plan he has been secretly preparing for years: to become the woman he has always dreamt of being.
Luke Hicks said in his Cannes review, “In good-spirited fashion, nothing offends. But nothing lands, either. It simply lacks inspiration, which is strange for an Audiard film, the likes of which are never the same. That’s what made the prospect of Emilia exciting and, doubly, its emptiness so flattening. For as patently fierce as it tries to be, it has no bite, no intrigue, no grip on the viewer.”
Watch below and we’ll update if a version with English subtitles arrives.
