On today’s episode – a crime thriller? A musical? A coming-out drama? Emilia Pérez, the new film from famed French auteur Jacques Audiard, is all of the above and somehow none of these things at all. It really is hard to understate the disorientating excess and madness of this somewhat opinion-splitting new Netflix awards contender, which is tipped for Oscar glory after picking up the jury prize at Cannes earlier this year. Jacques is, of course, the writer-director of works like A Prophet, Rust and Bone, See How They Fall, The Beat That My Heart Skipped and The Sisters Brothers, a masterful western from 2018. But Emilia Pérez is like none of those films. It’s a film that sees Jacques – who, at seventy-two years young, could be making victory-lap movies at this stage in his career – swinging for the fences. 

The movie follows Rita, a criminal defence lawyer played by Zoe Saldaña, who is kidnapped and brought before someone terrifying – Manitas Del Monte, one of Mexico’s most feared cartel bosses, played by Karla Sofía Gascón. Manitas has something to ask of Rita. This crime lord – responsible for such brutal bloodshed, in a country blighted by thousands of cartel-related missing persons – wishes to fake their death and transition gender. And to do so, they need Rita’s help. Reborn as Emilia Perez, this character embarks on a new life that she finds, over the course of the movie, had to untangle from what came before.

Al caught up with Jacques a few days after the film’s release on Netflix to break down the script, with a little help from his translator, Nicholas Elliott. Get ready to learn about the version of Emilia Pérez in which the character of Rita was a man, and in which a romance blossomed between the lawyer and the eponymous former crime lord. You’ll hear about why Jacques is so drawn to characters attempting to reinvent themselves in his work, and there’s also a breakdown of the story’s dramatic climax – an ending that asks complicated questions of the audience, questions with no easy answers.

Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].

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