Emilia Pérez

The Exhumation of the Dead

or

Careful, There's No Railing

 

Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez (streaming forever on Netflix) seems purposely designed to make half of America's head explode. A musical with a trans protagonist who decides to quit their life as a drug kingpin and to become a woman. It's both a practical decision—he wants out of the drug trade, which guarantees a short life expectancy and he has a wife and kids that he adores—and a personal one—he wants a clean soul and to be true to himself, and his life in the macho world of the drug-trade just doesn't lend itself to his aspirations. He wants out, both of the way of the cartels and the way he must live his life as a merciless no-nonsense drug lord. 

Easier said than done.

 

Top-lining the film is Zoe Saldaña as attorney Rita Mora Castro, who we first see writing the closing argument for a case she does not believe in, but that ultimately is won, which leaves her conflicted about her profession. She receives an anonymous phone-call that puts it bluntly "Do you want to become rich? I have a proposition for you."

She's directed to a location 10 minutes away, where a car comes to pick her up, a hood is placed over her head, and she is taken to the stronghold of the Los Cabalos drug cartel, run by Juan "Manitas" Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), the man who made the phone-call. His proposition is this: he wants to "disappear", fake his own death, and to have gender-affirming surgery so that he can live the rest of his life as a woman, with his family transported to Switzerland for their safety. Rita's job is to investigate, advocate, and see to the details to accomplish these goals.

She manages to make all the arrangements and walks away a very rich woman. Four years later at a swank dinner party she meets a woman named Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascónagain) and suddenly realizes...it's her client.

Audiard dramatizes the moment by shutting off every decorative light in the room, isolating the two women, who are the only people on Earth (well, besides the operating team) who know Emilia's past. For Rita, it's a moment of horror, because why would they suddenly cross paths just four years later—she fears for her life. But Emilia has other plans for Rita; as she accomplished things so well previously, she hires her to arrange to bring his wife (played by Selena Gomez) and his two children back to Mexico, to live with Emilia, who will masquerade as Manitas' sister. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, a lot, apparently. If half the heads of America have exploded, almost all of them have in the story's setting of Mexico. Director Audiard is French and he filmed the movie in Paris. Only one of the principal actors is Mexican, and the script has been criticized for its confusion of Spanish and Mexican idioms as well as incorrect uses of pronouns, and for those "in the know" the accents are all over the place, needing to have them explained away in some expositional dialogue and for all this the movie is considered something of a pariah in Mexico. There are various controversies at the core of Emilia Pérez, but they've tended to eclipse some of the more problematic aspects to the film.

Before we get into that, the performances, however untechnical in terms of accents, are game. Gascón, a trans actor, is great in both roles she plays, and manages to garner empathy, while retaining an element that makes you suspect she could snap at any minute. Selena Gomez does well with her role as Manitas' wife, who realizes her place as a pawn in the relationship, but has just enough brio to make her own choices when given a long enough leash. But, the stand-out is Saldaña, who has done well for herself in well-established roles even if they're CGI enhanced, but here she gets to show her abilities as singer and dancer and she electrifies at it, while also going through some pretty complex emotions in transition scenes when the professional veneer she maintains drops.

Now, the downside...for a musical, the music isn't that great, for the most part taking the "Hamilton" approach of scatting between beats with lyrics that are better than the ones in, say, Annette, but far from memorable. The piece was first designed as an operetta, so the songs are just syncopated dialog revealing inner thoughts that transactional dialog is too plain to convey and the way they're presented is director-heavy music-video mode, where the camera does most of the dancing.

But, the part of the movie that irritates me is it's very old-fashioned in its way of dealing with the trans issues. To tell you why would reveal too much of the plot, but let's just say there's no such thing as redemption in Emilia Pérez. No second chances. It says, you may live a new life, but you will pay for the sins of the previous one...which, given the fact that the character tries to redeem herself with a charitable organization to provide answers to the families of victims of drug-cartels, is very Old Testament. You could argue that Manitas was a drug-lord, that he's destroyed so many lives she doesn't deserve to atone or to achieve atonement. Point taken. The crimes one then does are a forever-trap, despite secular ideas of reformation or religious ones of penance absolving them.

But, if that's so, it's akin (to the nth degree) to the faux-pas of "dead-naming" a trans person. Does blame transcend sexual identity? Does guilt? And if a person changes their life to atone for the sins of their past, to try to make it right for the survivors, is it atonement, or is it "too little too late." But, somebody just didn't have the chops to "go there." Emilia Pérez completely by-passes any deep-thought for melodrama and a conclusion for complex moral arguments right out of the Hays Code. It's annoying.

There's just enough clutziness to the whole enterprise, that you kind of wish there was a trans director (a Mexican trans director) behind it who might have been a bit more savvy, not only to the possibilities, but also the problems. Audiard has done some great work in the past (Une Prophete and Rust and Bone), but this one, he overreached and stylistic story-telling or satirical elements cannot camouflage the inherent issue of being a bit behind the curve when dealing with gender-politics. 

 

Emilia Perez is content to merely be outrageous. Well, they got the outrage. Just not the kind they were expecting.

Swann in Love

Swann in Love (Volker Schlöndorff, 1984) Some things are just miracles of happenstance.

 

Director Volker Schlöndorff (The Lost Honor of Katarina Blum, The Tin Drum) was having dinner with his regular screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière and writer-director Peter Brook when Brook casually mentioned that he'd done an adaptation of a section of Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" (or as it was published in English "A Remembrance of Things Past") and had sufficiently "cracked it" to make a screenplay in the spirit of the novel, but, owing to a busy schedule, couldn't find the time to direct it (as was his intention) and that the producers were looking for a replacement. 

 

"A terrific excitement gripped me..." the director recalled. "'I am available,' I said half-jokingly without thinking it over." Schlöndorff had read the Proust novel when he was seventeen at his boarding school. "Proust revealed three worlds to me: the French language, the corresponding society and the unknown regions of love and jealousy." And the memory of the book was so vivid, he did not go back and re-read it, merely using Brook's script as a template, to recreate the world of La Belle Époque, with a lushness and luxuriousness that recalled the work of Luchino Visconti (who'd tried to make a version of it in 1969) ably helped by the cinematography of Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer Sven Nykvist.

Jeremy Irons plays Charles Swann, a well-to-do bon vivant in Paris, accepted in most social circles despite being Jewish. He is a habitue of the most fashionable salons of Paris and, if looked on with suspicion by most of the husbands, is positively cooed over by their wives, particularly the Duchesse de Guermantes (Fanny Ardant) and Madame Verdurin (Marie-Christine Barrault), the latter of whom has suggested that Swann might have an interest in a courtesan, Odette de Cracy (Ornella Muti), to whom he is introduced by his friend, the Baron de Charlus (Alain Delon, in a role that he plays floridly and rather heroically—he's the most fun I've ever seen him).

Their meeting does not initially go well, but over the course of lunch Swann becomes smitten and then obsessed with Odette, his thoughts becoming consumed by her. Especially when she doesn't make herself available to him. His days are spent trying to find out details about her—who her male companions might have been, if she's ever slept with women—personal details the knowledge of which might put him off, but having no desire to not possess her completely. This might cost him—prestige, respect, Odette would never be accepted in the society he enjoys—but, although warned, he loses control of his perceived dignity for this one woman.

"Why do I subject myself to such humiliation?" he muses at one point. "I used to think Odette was ugly! I had to fall in love with her because she reminded me of a Botticelli. Now I've decided to fall out of love with her and I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't! Tonight - tonight, I finally understand that her love for me - which I rejected at first - that the feelings she had for me will never be revived. But without her I will cease to exist. It's an illness that could prove fatal. And yet I'm afraid of being cured." And, later, "My love for Odette goes beyond physical desire. It is so caught up in my actions, my thoughts, my sleep, my life, that without it I'd cease to exist...My love is an illness that has reached the stage where it cannot be removed without destroying me. As surgeons say, it's inoperable."

Wow. Tough words. A brutal self-assessment. And Swann will risk everything—his friends, his status, his dignity—for her. Even when Madame Verdurin attempts to insert a rival between him and Odette, Swann will not be deterred, going so far as to spend the night in Paris trying to find her, trying to find out out anything about the time away from him—actions that even Swann's lowly carriage driver thinks are beneath him—until he can win her over, something that she already desires. "You fear affection? How odd." she says to him at one point. "That's all I look for. I'd give my soul to find it."

And, in a way, she does. There is compromise for comfort, and Swann certainly provides affection, obsessively so, but she loses her own autonomy in that particular bargain (hardly something that is out of the ordinary in any society, much less 19th Century France). Swann, who spends way too much time in his own head, is left, toward the end of his life, to contemplate the mystery of what has become of him, with his usual brutality: "To think that I wasted years of my life - that I wanted to die - that the love of my life - was a woman I didn't like - who wasn't my type."

Well, it's not a mystery to me, as I've nattered on about my thoughts on that subject. But, Proust...and Brook and Schlöndorff, in their time...rather bravely dissect the details and peculiarities and humiliations and self-flagellations that an obsessive love can wreak on a rational mind. It's a lovely film with a particularly wicked sensibility towards a too-common subject. We've had scads of rom-comedies. But, seemingly too few...rom-tragedies?...that still have, outside of the mind, anyway, a conventionally happy ending.

Bob le flambeur

Bob le flambeur (aka Bob The Gambler)(Jean-Pierre Melville, 1958) Everyone wants to be Bob (Roger Duchesne), at least in the Montmartre section of Paris in which he regularly walks the night-streets like a ghost, like a rumor, like a legend. There are lots of stories about him, everyone has one, but Bob used to rob banks, even served time for it, and now wanders from poker game to poker game, where the risks are little and the rewards are paltry. And the casinos? He hasn't won in a long time. Too long.

Everyone wants to be Bob, except for Bob, who wants to be independently wealthy. And the Bob everyone else wants to be? His luck has run out. And he's on a losing streak that seems to never end. He even has a slot-machine in his closet that keeps coming up without a payline. "I'd even lose at hopscotch these days" he says ruefully.

So Bob Montagné—it's his mother's name, and he left home when he was fourteen—wanders around, getting older (looking at his reflection he sees "a real thug's face"), a pillar of his community even if it's been long since where he held anything up. But, he has the underworld community's respect. Even the police commissioner, Ledru (Guy Decomble), owes him something—Bob saved his life once, and it's never been forgotten, and Bob is good for scuttlebutt that the cops can't reach.

So, Bob walks the razor's edge between good and bad, but even he has his limits. When the pimp Marc (Gérard Buhr), whom he loathes, comes to him for help after beating up one of his girls, Bob refuses leaving him out in the cold. Then, meeting an ambitious young thing (Isabelle Corey) in a club, he invites her to his apartment...not for anything salacious, but the girl's been kicked out of her apartment and Bob wants her out of the way of creeps like Marc, steering her, instead, to Paolo (Daniel Cauchy), one of Bob's hangers-ons, who becomes smitten with her. Maybe too much.

Those contacts provide an opportunity. Through the grapevine, Bob hears that there's a big event happening at the Deauville casino—on the day of a big horse race the place is going to be holding 8,000,000 francs in its safe. Bob's safe-cracker pal, Roger (André Garet), has a friend on the inside and says that by 5 a.m. the money will be there for the taking. For Bob, who's been straight for 20 years, the temptation is too great and his luck's been too chancy, so he decides to set up a heist to rob the safe in the early daylight. He gets collateral from McKimmie (Howard Vernon) and sets up the heist like a military operation.

It's the jackpot of a lifetime and Bob is taking no chances. But, you know how things go with heist films, no matter how "New Wave" or cynically amoral they strive to be—something's got to go off-plan. In this case, it's Bob himself that's the crux of the problem; he's too ingrained and too well-connected to keep the machinery of the plot from gnashing its gears and gumming up the works. Plus, Bob's of a particular mind-set: he has a code that the rest of his circle may not, and though he may keep everybody carefully compartmentalized, Montmartre is a small section of town and people run into each other. And no matter what the cards show, you can't get into peoples' heads. Sometimes, not even your own.

Melville's less interested in the heist—you don't even see it, unlike, say, Rififi— than he is in the preparation (there's more suspense in seeing them trying to do it than doing it), but, more importantly is the mind-set of the participants, particularly Bob's. He's a guy who loves to take chances, but even a sure thing—like this robbery—could be bad luck, as it has in the past. Lots of surprises and chance encounters conspire to screw everything up, but the biggest surprise—certainly, to Bob—is the thing that really threatens the robbery. And he has to make a choice, depend on a sure thing...or keep pressing your luck.

Stylish—in a gritty sort of way—Bob le flambeur is one of those movies paying tribute to the past, even as it ushers in a new way of doing things, seeing as how it inspired the French New Wave with its natural lighting, it's long stretches of "play-it-as-it-lays" cinéma-vérité grit, and a cynicism about romanticism—the only kiss that matters is when a card hits the green felt—but codes of conduct define a person are inviolate.

Olde Review: Ramparts of Clay

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

 

Ramparts of Clay aka "Remparts d'argile" (Jean-Louis Bertuclucci, 1968) Ramparts of Clay was on John Hartl's ten best list this year—that doesn't mean anything, it's just a fact—also a fact that a co-worker at KCMU thought it was an extremely oppressive film, and I respect his opinion, as well.
Okay, this is just to tell you that the opinions vary, and my opinion is just one in the crowd's. Ramparts of Clay is oppressive; its narrative moves at a snail's pace, and there is almost no truly-defined dialog (what there is, is elliptical at best).

Depressing prospect for ninety minutes' viewing, isn't it?

But there are many other films with these qualities: Nicholas Roeg's (Walkabout), Richard Lester's Petulia, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The burden of these film's story-telling abilities falls on the shoulders of the images, and you have to be damned talented with your camera to pull it off. Jean-Louis Bertucelli is awful-damned talented, and so is his camera person Andreas Winding. It's a shame the print being shown on Saturday has so many scratches that distract from the beauty of the images. But you can glean some satisfaction from it, if you concentrate and let your eyes tell you the story, and let Bertucelli's elemental film-making—the way stories were told in silent (film) times—give you the information and direct your mind to what's going on.

On the other hand, you may find the film dull, but that is your opinion and it is the last one—and the one that's most important.

 

Cee-ripes! Way to "commit," Mr. "Reviewer!" Could we be any more vague? 

One of two things are happening here: either I didn't see the film (or fell asleep during it--not unlikely, although I do remember Ramparts of Clay and being moved by it) and I'm tap-dancing, or I didn't want to hurt that co-worker's feelings by saying they were "full of it" and a "film-weenie" just because the film was being told solely by images, which they considered "oppressive."

I'm way over that these days.

These days I don't quibble, or consider other people's opinions--I just tell them they're wrong, and, quite possibly, an idiot. Then, I'll compound the problem by telling them WHY they're wrong, and expect that to convince the poor soul that, yes, they truly are an idiot, thank you, thank you, James, for opening my eyes to that fact, woe is me.

Yeah, that doesn't happen much.

But I will say that any film drawing comparisons to 2001, Walkabout, or Petulia, is in august company, and worth another look-see.

2024: I'm older. These days I don't quibble. I say "Uh-huh" and leave it at that. If the argument "for" and "against" is valid (and I've seen the film), I'll weigh it against my own and it might alter. I consider opinions "grist for the mill" now. If I haven't seen a film, it goes on "The Must-See List" that I will probably never complete. 

John Hartl, by the way, was the film reviewer for The Seattle Times at the time. He died in 2022.

Anatomy of a Fall

What Is True? (When You Jump to Conclusions)

or

An Empty Space Must Be Filled

or

If a Teacher Falls Off a Roof and There's No One There to See It, Does It Make a Case?

 

The winner of the Palme d'or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Anatomy of a Fall couldn't be simpler: Did the novelist (Sandra Hüller) kill her depressive husband (Samuel Theis)? Or did he simply fall from the attic of the chalet they share near Grenoble accidentally? I could go over the facts of the case and the circumstances but the film does a very good job of that, and an even better job of showing how an aggressive prosecution (and most of them are) can confuse, obfuscate, make mountains out of molehills and accentuate the trivial in the pursuit of what everybody agrees is "justice."

 

But "justice" is blind and the devil is in the details. "Justice" is supposed to be blind as regards race, creed and the like, but when justice is blind to the circumstances—that is to a circumstance that has no witnesses—there is a rush to fill the void. "Nature abhors a vacuum," goes the saying, but so does jurisprudence. So, without the benefit of being there, there comes a rush of speculation, of "expert evidence," of theory, none of which is fact and is viable as "hearsay" evidence. It's not real. It's not what happened. It's what could have happened, and that opens up a world of possibilities that threaten to swamp the one Truth.

So, we have a horrible circumstance—a marriage, which has its share of conflicts—comes under scrutiny when one of the couple dies. There were no witnesses—the wife was asleep in her bedroom. The couple's son (Milo Machado Graner), who has impaired vision, was on a walk with his guide-dog, and comes home to find his father, who had been working upstairs, on the ground, bleeding, and, if not dead, close enough to succumb to the injuries sustained before help arrives. The autopsy is "inconclusive." as to how he died, other than he is dead, and their is a grievous wound to the head, which could have been caused by the fall or could have been inflicted before the fall by...someone.

Anyone who's seen even one episode of "Dateline" knows that the suspicion turns first to the surviving spouse if it is a "suspicious death" (or "morte suspect" as the case is being tried in a French court—the film jumps back and forth between English and French, so use your closed-captioning), and unless another explanation can be found conclusively, it will stay there until it can be proven otherwise, in which case there is a presumption of guiltiness unless proven innocent. In that topsy-turvy situation, everything becomes fair game as far as means, motive, and benefit, and at that point, prosecution and defense spar by blaming victims, compounding a tragedy as a matter of course.

And that's what Anatomy of a Fall is all about: how a system designed to right wrongs and punish the guilty can turn into "crazy-town" at the whims of the motivations of the litigants, rather than coming to a conclusion of fact. It becomes a blood-sport and a scorched earth battle that serves no one but getting a "winner." And, as another court-room drama, Compulsion, put it, it's more than a little ironic that a prosecution trying to determine premeditation that the defendant "planned and schemed" when there "are officers of the court who for months have planned and schemed and contrived" and who hang on the supposition that something may be "improbable...but not impossible."

Writer-director Justine Triet shows what can happen when thumbs start being put on justice's scale and a legal system becomes weaponized. One wants to think that intentions are for the best, but the evidence shows that though it may be improbable...it is not impossible.

Olde Review: The Fire Within

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

This Saturday's ASUW films in 130 Kane are billed under the theme "The Tragedy of the Spirit" and the two films are Louis Malle's The Fire Within and Ingmar Bergman's Persona.*

The Fire Within aka Le Feu Follet (Louis Malle, 1963) The Fire Within was advertised as "a psychological thriller," which is a totally mis-leading label. It is not a thriller at all, but a study. A study of a man cured of alcoholism and, of his past life. I tell you this only because if you go to The Fire Within expecting something along the lines of a Marnie, you are going to be sorely disappointed, and such a reaction does not allow a fast shift of the emotional gears in order to appreciate what is there. Just a warning to put you in a proper frame of mind.

Anyway, through a long stay at a rest clinic the man has dried out, sheltered from the environment that had led him to the irresponsibility of his previous life, but clinging to that shelter, fearing to leave it for fear of what he would find outside. After some bolstering he does go out in search of friends, of companionship, of the past he has lost. Life is moving too slowly for him, with too much mediocrity and too little love, and as he goes from friend to friend, his spirit slips away from him, beyond his control.

Louis Malle who directed The Fire Within, also directed the documentary Phantom India which was shown a couple weeks back, and he shoots this film in much the same way--no real sets are used, but the odd little details of life around us are focused upon, giving the film a sense of reality, of it actually happening. 

Broadcast on KCMU-FM on October 29th, 1975

Okay. Confession time. What I'm not saying in this review--trying very hard not to say--is that I hate sitting through Louis Malle films. I just despise it. I haven't seen one in 20 years (the man died in 1995), but each of his films was a bit of a drag--Lacombe, Lucien, Phantom India, Pretty Baby. I just finished watching Night Moves in which detective Harry Moseby begs off going to see the new "Roehmer film" because he says "it's like watching paint dry." That's how I feel about Malle. I remember at this time (1975), I went around joking that "the perfect Louis Malle film would be two guys sitting in a room talking, one camera." And in 1981, Malle made essentially that (though with more than one camera) with My Dinner with Andre (which I actually liked, come to think of it).

One day, I need to be sat down in front of the TV with a strong drink, strapped down and made to watch Atlantic City or The Lovers, or Crackers, Vanya on 42nd Street--I'd like to see that, actually, or Damage or Au revoir, les enfants. Maybe the years will have mellowed me, or given me life-experience or patience enough to appreciate his work. But with so many films I haven't seen, and my past experience, Malle always gets pushed to the bottom of the pile.

C'est la vie.

* Persona tomorrow...