Well before his summer at Cannes this year , Jacques Audiard had always been a storyteller who thrives in contradictions. For those familiar with the French auteur’s oeuvre — the gritty prison drama of A Prophet or the migrant saga of Dheepan — his latest turn might seem particularly jarring. This time, he’s taken on his most extravagant contradiction yet: a musical crime comedy about a Mexican drug lord who faked his death to become a woman.
For Jacques, the Cannes-winning Emilia Pérez was a logical progression, tapping into the primal themes of transformation and identity that have often defined his work. At first blush, the Spanish operatic fable sounds absurdly high-concept, even for the man with a particularly brooding filmography . But dive a little deeper, and you’ll find the soul of an unlikely redemption story through which Jacques has pulled from disparate genres and settings to create a world both foreign and familiar — one where the vibrancy of musical numbers and the dark underpinnings of crime intersect in unexpectedly compelling ways.
ALSO READ: ‘Emilia Pérez’ selected as France’s official submission for the Oscars 2025 In Emilia Pérez , Zoe Saldaña stars as Rita, a jaded lawyer who, on a whim, agrees to help infamous drug lord Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón) transition to his authentic self as the titular, Emilia Pérez. Meanwhile, Manitas fakes his own death and embarks on a journey to reconcile a violent past with an ear.