The Friend (2024)

White Ghost/Sad Pony

or

"What's Going To Happen To The Dog?"

As soon as it's over, you want to watch The Friend again. It's that good, with a literate script, masterful performances (from everybody, not just Naomi Watts and Bill Murray...or the dog, Bing), New York as a background, an intricately selected soundtrack, and the least anthropomorphic animal performance I've seen in a long time.

And, it's a "dog" movie.

I hate "dog" movies, usually. You know why. The dog always seems to die at the end, usually in the dramatic interest of teaching the film's protagonist a life-lesson of great import. Like "life is a gift" or "appreciate what you've got when you've got it." Blah-de-blah-de-blah. I'm cynical of the form because I hate to cry in theaters and beating me with a dead dog turns me into a blubbering wreck and I hate to throw away all the soggy popcorn. The one time I didn't was when John Wick's dog was murdered and that it inspired him to come out of assassination retirement (which I giggled at, finding it perversely ludicrous).

But, this one I rushed to see because, well, Naomi Watts and Bill Murray are in it and their taste in parts alone should sell it, some laudatory words online were mentioned, and it's based on a Booker prize-winning novel by Sigrid Nunez. All indications were for some good breeding of a project that was low-key and mildly amusing. I wasn't prepared for a great movie, but I got it in spades.

It starts with a moment of inspiration, which we're not privy to: successful author-teacher Walter Mitchell (Murray) is out on his morning "Two Bridges" jog when he sees something that delights him, but we cut away before we see what has animated him so. We see him at a dinner party where he is holding court, volubly telling the story of his discovery. By the next scene, he is dead—by his own hand, they say*—and the survivors are left wondering how such a thing could happen. What would the world be without Walter? There were so many projects in the air, so many things left undone, and he'd just met his grown daughter whom he—or any of his wives, past or present—never knew existed.

But, hardest hit seems to be Iris (Watts), ostensibly his best friend. Walter was her mentor (currently she's working on a book of his correspondence) and she, in turn, is mentoring his new/old daughter, collaborating on the book. Progress on it has been slow but, now, work on it—like Walter—has come to a screeching halt.

Walter's widow (Noma Dumezweni) has asked Iris to come see her and she has a request. Well, more of a bequest—Walter had asked that if anything happened to him that Iris should take care of his dog, Apollo, the creature that he encountered on that morning run.

"Apollo" is a 150 lb. Great Dane and Iris weighs quite a bit less and is only half-again taller. Plus, Iris' apartment is, what they call in New York, a "studio" but it could be a "prewar", but anywhere else it would be called "cramped" and if you were selling it you'd mention "simplicity" and "ease of maintenance". In no way would it be considered a kennel, and—besides—it's in a "No Pets Allowed" building. Iris is not keen on the idea and her "go-to" is to avoid the Super as long as she can and find a place to "re-home" Apollo. But, in the meantime, she picks up the dog at its temporary kennel to take to what she hopes is its temporary home in her apartment only to find that the brute jumps on her bed and spreads out, despite her protests. His forlorn look prompts Iris' neighbor to remark "There's a PONY on your bed! A SAD pony!"

A sad pony to be sure, but also the elephant in the room. Apollo is just too big to fit into her apartment without obstructing Iris' every movement. She capitulated by pulling an air mattress out of her closet and sleeping on the floor, Apollo's sad eyes never leaving her through the night. But, the two are bonded, despite the separate bed-places in that they're both grieving—she for her mentor, he for his master. One's a human, one's a dog; she's a loner, he's a pack animal, so they're both approaching each other from separate corners. And with all the inconvenience this big white ghost causes in her life, some accommodation needs to be reached, some compromise between these two living beings who've been left behind.

And, ultimately, value.

The Friend, unlike so many "dog movies", is what the AARP magazine likes to call "Movies for Grownups". The emotions are complicated and recognizable, and maybe over some folks' heads. But, a New Yorker will recognize the panic of possibly losing a rent-controlled apartment; an older person will recognize the paralysis of grief; a real dog-owner will understand the inconvenience of pet-ownership** ...beyond the dog-movie-cliché antics of four-legged tornado-damage to the feng shui. There are no easy-laugh slobber jokes. This one is about loss, responsibility, and mutual need. And a bit about survivor's guilt. And the usual "taking care of others is more fulfilling than taking care of yourself." And Watts and Murray are brilliant in this.

It's so good and funny and wise that you immediately want to see it again. Or, better yet, read the book to get all the good stuff they couldn't make room for. Sometimes, that's the best part.

* I suppose with the mention of it, I should give the number of the Suicide and Crisis Hotline—If you or a loved one are having emotional distress or thoughts of suicide, call 988 to connect with a lifeline specialist for support.—but DOGE only knows if it still exists. From what I've been able to access online, it does. 

 

** The other day something popped up in my news-feed that still makes me laugh: "Nobody has ever said 'What this house needs is a box-full of shit. Let's get a cat!'"

The Substance

Substance Abuse: An Exercise in Horror

or

"Oh, That This Too Too Solid Flesh Would Melt, Thaw and Resolve Itself Into a Dew! Or That the Everlasting Had Not Fix'd His Canon Against Self-Slaughter. Oh God!"
 

Submitted for your approval one Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a flickering fitness guru for the "beauty-is-only-skin-deep" believing house-bound. A body-suited drill sergeant, who kills with kindness and only for your own good. Every stretch, every kick, every high-step is designed to make you as good as you can be because, after all, it works for her and she's shy a half-century. 

But Time waits for no man...or woman, for that matter, and Elizabeth Sparkle is about to learn something that will shock her down to her leg-warmers and trainers. It's a little lesson in Inevitability, in Life and the Television Industry, and it will take her the way Ponce deLeon traveled for the fabled Fountain of Youth. It's a little known path between Desperation Street and the Avenue of Self-Deception, which are all just detours that spill out...into The Twilight Zone.

Apologies to Rod Serling

The DNA of The Substance is very much that of a typical episode of TV's classic "Twilight Zone" in that it takes a mercurial person comfortable with their situation and up-ends it to which they have to act in an atypical way, even fantastic way, which then, ironically, comes back and bites them in the ass.

Elizabeth Sparkle is the host of a television work-out program that she has been doing for years and years, long after her career as an Academy Award-winning actress. On her 50th birthday, she is given a card, a present, red roses...and the pink slip. She has been sacked. Her network (run by her cartoonish producer, Harvey, played by Dennis Quaid) is (of course!) appreciative of her and her "long run" but, now, is another day and they're looking for a new host. A younger host. A sexier host. And, at 50, Elizabeth is not considered either of those things. She has lost some of her sparkle.

Most celebrities would consider product endorsements, a line of cosmetics or scents, maybe a tell-all book (how about a pod-cast?), but not Elizabeth. She stews. Then, a car accident—from which she emerges miraculously unhurt—lands her in the hospital, but bereft and in tears. A young orderly slips the sobbing Elizabeth a flash-drive with a note that says "It changed my life." The flash-drive has a presentation for "The Substance" and it's pitch is intriguing:

Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger, more beautiful, more perfect. One single injection unlocks your DNA, starting a new cellular division, that will release another version of yourself. This is the Substance. You are the matrix. Everything comes from you. Everything is you. This is simply a better version of yourself. You just have to share. One week for one and one week for the other. A perfect balance of seven days each. The one and only thing not to forget: You. Are. One. You can't escape from yourself.

That last bit probably serves as the warning of side-effects.

Elizabeth calls the number on the flash-drive and orders. She receives an address and a key-card and rushes to a run-down, seemingly abandoned site that discourages investigation. Inside, she comes to a pristine locker-room (it's amazing how the Substance organization runs like Amazon—except they answer the phone faster) and eagerly rushes back home to her posh condo to sample her wares.

The Substance kit has everything she'll need but it's an odd mix of syringes and tubing (lots of tubing), bizarre containers of "food" and sutures and bandages and vials, lots of vials. It's a bit intimidating, but Elizabeth takes the stuff to her "panic room" of a bathroom and injects herself with the "Activator," tripping out and falling like a dead lump to the floor.

Like most drugs, The Substance should come with warnings. Like, watch it somewhere in a chair that has something to grip onto. Because "The Activator" sequence is a horrific exercise where Elizabeth's naked body starts to roil and heave and mutate until the skin of her back starts to split like a busted seam and from it's zippered wound emerges..."Sue" (Margaret Qualley)—as she will call herself—who is literally "Born Sexy Yesterday." Sue stumbles about the bathroom, taking it all in, but once she reaches a mirror and sees herself, she calms down, stretches, and gets down to business. She has work to do.

Like clean up the mess. She sutures up Elizabeth's back (filmed in excruciating detail), hooks her up to the "food matrix" package—Elizabeth's going to be unconscious for a week—and experiences some head-spins and nose-bleeding, so she instinctively goes to the "Stabilizer" package, pulls out the hypodermics and inserts a needle into Elizabeth's spinal column and withdraws some liquid from the "matrix". Once she injects herself with it, she is good to go.

That is, go to the audition for Sparkle's old job, which she wins handily. Producer Harvey agrees that she can be allowed to work every other week (she explains that she has to take care of her elderly mother, which is true in a way), and everyone starts prepping for the new exercise show that will be flashier, sexy, and more provocative with other things on its mind than just body management. Elizabeth's happy. Sue's happy. Even Harvey is happy. What could go "worng"?

Everything, if you believe the altered cliché of "Nothing exceeds like success." Although Elizabeth and Sue "are one" they are experiencing different realities and so become of two minds about the situation, which results in bent rules, missed deadlines, and adverse effects on their twin. Things turn nasty very quickly, and given "The Activator Sequence" (which will seem tame in awhile) that nastiness is going to become bloody, gooey, and, at times, painful to watch.

Yet, you giggle throughout The Substance, not because it's inherently funny—maybe ironic—but because of the sheer verve of the thing...and the nerve. The twisted nerve. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat is not playing subtle here, but her playbook is spot-on with some arresting images and a boldness that you can't help but admire. It will ultimately fall apart (heh) as the third act will descend into a frothing, spewing gore-fest that is so over-the-top, you'll feel the need to shower afterwards. But, before it goes down the drain, it revels in its satire and makes its point about society's age-adverseness and obsession with form over substance. And the lesson that even fitness gurus should know something about karma.

Fargeat settles the look of the film directly and comfortingly in the sci-fi realm with a steely one-person perspective with wide-angle lenses, emulating Kubrick, but more directly from John Frankenheimer's similarly-themed Seconds. For some reason, that made me feel all warm and fuzzy. And, thematically, she has aspects and far-away echoes from dissimilar films as All About Eve and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. The reverberations of past films are all over this, but Fargeat keeps it fresh and innovative.

And the performances are quite good—Quaid's over-the-top, but I think that was deliberate, with Qualley providing just enough of that Manson-girl predatoriness that she seems to inhabit. And Demi Moore does some of the bravest image-flagellation since Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Kudos. Brava.

We should all be so brave. But, like any pharmaceutical ad, we should probably end with some warnings. The Substance is not for the squeamish. The Sunstance is not for those who are offended by extensive nudity, whether attractive or not. Or react to needles, or open wounds, or festering sores, or a vast amount of red-colored Karo syrup being sprayed like a fire-hose, use caution. Or if you don't like being taught "lessons" in movies that run the danger of changing your encrusted attitude (but don't worry, there's a lot of scary stuff at the end).

 

Always read the label and make sure you read the possible side-effects. Do not take The Substance if you're allergic to The Substance. Nor, should you take it if you don't know yourself very well. And, of course, you should always take it...with a grain of salt.

Nickel Boys

Walk a Mile in My Shoes

or

"Not My Elwood. Not My Elwood."

Impressionistic and impressive, Nickel Boys tells its story of Elwood Curtis, from Tallahassee, Florida ("Frenchtown" he'll add), who hitchhiking to attend a technical college in New York, is picked up by a car-thief and arrested as an accessory and sent to "Nickel Academy" a segregated reform school with a checkered history.

 

Raised by his grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

), Elwood (played by Ethan Herisse) had received exemplary marks at school, got a scholarship to that college, and had been active in civil rights actions, but being sent to "juvie" merely by association has derailed his life and his prospects, and somewhat his spirit. 

But not his conscience. Sticking up for a weaker kid being picked on, he is punched in the face by the bullies, knocked out, and sent to the hospital. 

And he has one friend. A good friend, Turner (Brandon Wilson), who is as cynical as Elwood is principled, and the two kids bond, help each other out and talk out their problems, confiding in each other. One seems to complete the other.

Our first glimpse of Elwood, reflected in his grandmother's iron.

Which is interesting, considering how the movie's filmed. It's all shot from a first-person singular point-of-view, initially Elwood's, but then once the two boys meet, the movie will switch off from one to the other.*  Sounds like it could be confusing, but director RaMell Ross manages to clue you in even if it isn't obvious which of the kids' eyes you're seeing the world through.

Elwood watches Dr. King in a store-front window.

Now, I haven't read Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winning novel (entitled "THE Nickel Boys") from which the film is based, but I'm getting the impression its not from a first person narrative.So, this re-imagining of the film is a pretty radical shift, boiling the novel down to just dialog and leaving the descriptive to be handled by the director and cinematographer (which you'd think would be natural—it's a movie, made of visual storytelling *duh*), but Ross does it with such discipline, one is never confused and only disoriented when the subject is disoriented.

Turner, from Elwood's perspective.

And Ross presents these unique perspectives in an almost-stream-of-consciousness way. He presents impressions of scenes. Glimpses of details that the characters' perspectives latch onto, whether it be their own reflection or in how you can tell someone's nervous by how their knees shake. In that way, it reminded of no other movie so much as The Tree of Life, but with a much-more controlled narrative structure and ...an actual story, rather than fleeting memories played at seeming random (as Tree does).

Elwood, from Turner's perspective.

And POV perspectives rarely work in movies, except for brief sequences where the sight of the actor on screen talking right at the audience is arresting. Here, the entire movie puts us in Elwood's—or Turner's—skin and we see what they see. We see their world and what attracts their attention. This is the sort of cinema I love...where the visuals tell the story more than the circumspect dialogue does. And Ross respects the audience enough to not resort to narrative hand-holding to explain what's on the screen (so many movies over-explain). It's all right there to see, if you're paying attention. It's a rich narrative dance that Ross creates, and it's one of the best films of the year.

* Director Ross does this in an interesting way. He first shoots Elwood meeting Turner sitting across a cafeteria table from him. THEN, Ross repeats the sequence all from Turner's point of view. There is really no differentiation between how the two perspectives look, but if you see Elwood, you know you're seeing things from Turner's point of view and vice versa. And if you're not looking at one or the other, you're given enough clues to figure out which character we're seeing the world through.

I'm Still Here (2024)

All I Have is a Photograph (And I Realize...)
or

"Hey, Hey, Dee Dee, Take Me Back to Piaui"

 

Rubens Paiva was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by armed men on January 20, 1971 for questioning about seditionists to the military dictatorship in power at the time and about a recent spate of kidnap cases involving foreign ambassadors to Brazil, including the representatives from the U.S., West Germany and Switzerland.

 

He never came home.

 

In fact, despite his car being found at a prison facility run by the military, there was no sign that he had ever been taken there, and officials denied he was in custody. It was like he never existed. Except that he left behind a wife and five children, one of whom, Marcelo, grew up to write about the incident in his 2015 book "Ainda Estou Aqui". 

That translates to I'm Still Here, and Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles—he made On the Road—has made a film of it, to put a face on one of the people "disappeared" due to governmental malfeasance throughout the world. The Paiva story is just one of thousands; there were 434 such "disappearances" during Brazil's military dictatorship alone.

Salles doesn't sensationalize things. He starts with family activities, the kids interacting on the beach not far from their back door, playing volleyball, finding a stray puppy, while mother Eunice—her full name is Maria Lucrécia Eunice Facciolla Paiva—(Fernanda Torres) floats in the ocean, peaceful and calm, when a military helicopter passes not far overhead interrupting the tranquility. Salles cuts between his footage and recreated 16mm "home movies" that the kids make to document their lives, serving as the movie's "B"-roll. They'll become important later. 

It's every day life. Parties, new dog, music, dancing. But, there's an under-current of politics. The party is for daughter Vera who's going off to London for school, partly because she has friends with leftist leanings who are being tracked by the government. Dad Ruben has returned from his own self-imposed exile after some months as a liberal councilman put him on the military's radar. But the ambassadorial kidnappings have intensified the military's presence in the streets and the father is keeping close contact with his friends in the Brazilian Labor Party. It's only a matter of time before that presence arrives at their door-step.

When it does, it comes quietly but assertively. Men in plain clothes and suspicious looks show up one day, armed, while the family is going on about their normal lives. But, the normalcy ends immediately. Ruben drives off in his car with a couple of the guys to be taken in for questioning. The family, particularly Eunice, take a "wait and see" attitude. But, then Eunice and her next eldest daughter Eliana are driven to one of the military prisons for their own questioning. Eunice will stay there for twelve days; Eliana just one. No mention is made of the whereabouts of her husband, and eventually all information about him dries up, and the military denies they have them. Then why is his car still in their lot?

I'm Still Here tracks the family's progress and the stoic Eunice's change from victim to activist and her quest for answers about what happened to her husband. It will take decades of effort as she also raises her children, but always keeping an eye on that empty chair at the dinner table. With her stores of pictures and films she has the evidence that her husband existed, while the government continues to deny his existence or their part in his disappearance. She will fight until she gets the one piece of paper that will expose the whole thing—his death certificate.

It's an amazing movie, much more so for the fact that it seems so ordinary, so focused as it is with the mere act of surviving a trauma, and building a family out of tragedy. Despite the hopelessness of the circumstances, the movie comes out filled with hope.

Anora

The Girlfriend Experience (and Transactional Relationships)

or

"She Happened..." ('Tis a Pity...)
 

Anora—"Call me 'Ani'"—Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) is a Brooklyn stripper working in "The Tenderloin" section of Manhattan. She's very, very good at her job working as a "hostess" getting to know the clientele, encouraging their drinking and their desires, even going so far as to escorting patrons to the nearest ATM when they run out of cash. If the "mark" is really friendly, the "VIP" treatment might be suggested to an area upstairs where the stripper can do a lap dance to make some extra dollars. There's no touching during the lap dances, although given the near-privacy of the area, rules can slip as easily as a halter-top.

 

We learn a lot about "Work-place Ani" in the first few minutes of the film, which is short on exposition but long on nudity. We see her backstage where she has little patience with bullshit. She has one good friend, Lulu (Luna Sofía Miranda), but has a somewhat competitive relationship with the other girls. And she's good at acting: acting interested, acting sensual, acting like she cares, finding the weak spot, using rapier-like flattery, and is quite creative at it. You have to be to score a buck.

But it's only acting. Once the club-wear is off and she's out the door of the HQ Club, she's a dead-eyed street urchin in hoodie and sweats making her way back to her home in the Russian-American community of Brighton Beach, where she rooms with her sister (Ella Rubin)—their relationship can best be described as passive-aggessively strained—and her hobbies appear to be...sleeping. Being a sex-worker in Manhattan is exhausting work. 

So, she's less-than-thrilled when the owner of the club, Jimmy (Vincent Radwinsky) wants her to pay special attention to a "high-roller." This turns out to be 21 year old Russian student Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), who is in the United States for a college education, but that he spends, largely unsupervised, drunk, stoned, obsessively playing video games and shacking up at the huge Brighton Beach mansion owned by his Russian oligarch father. "Vanya" is a child with little impulse control and he falls head over heels for Ani, who, once she sees how free the kid is with Dad's money and doing a little negotiating, agrees to a week-long extracurricular activity at his place for $15,000 cash upfront.

Ani is rarely impressed, but she's awed by the Zakharov complex and the kid is putty in her hands. He gives her clothes, jewelry, the best wine, the best food, and she's charmed by "Vanya's" drunken joie de vivre and his generosity towards her—she could get used to this. She meets his friends, becomes part of a group, all bankrolled by "Vanya", who—impulsively, again—decides to take his posse to Las Vegas on a private jet.

The group stay at a high-end suite, living the highest of lives, when "Vanya" does the craziest thing yet—he asks Ani to marry him. She scoffs. But, he's serious; if they get married he can get a green card and stay in America—he won't have to go back to Russia and work for his father. They can live at his father's American property, and things will just go on as they have been. Ani agrees and they go to a Vegas wedding chapel and seal the deal. He buys her a very expensive wedding ring.

They return home and Ani quits her job at the Club; the other girls are thrilled, but there is the underlying suspicion: "give it two weeks." Things like this, they only happen in the movies. But, the two are clearly besotted with each other and they set up house at the mansion. Life is good.

Until...

 

Until, "Vanya's" parents get wind of the marriage all the way from Russia through social media, and they decide to travel to the States to take their son home. A frantic mother Galina (Darya Ekamasova) calls "Vanya's" Armenian godfather Toros (Karren Karagulian) to get the marriage anulled, get the ring back, kick "the prostitute" out and get their kid ready to get on a plane. Toros is the Zakharov lap-dog—he's been keeping "Vanya" out of trouble and being the family "cleaner" for any mis-deeds—so he sends his henchmen, his brother Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), to get the ball rolling and Ani out.

And that's when things start to go South. "Vanya" won't let in the bodyguards, but he's so slight that they manage to get in, anyway. Ani begins to protest and Garnik and Igor try to cool things down, but still get things done...which doesn't actually happen. "Vanyas" lamely protests and fusses that he's not getting his way; Ani protests they're married and there's nothing anybody can do about that, then "Vanya" runs out of the house and Ani starts attacking the bodyguards, who, though they outweigh her by two can't seem to corral her—while doing some physical damage to the living room. Finally, Ani just screams and the two guys get so freaked out that they end up tying her up and gagging her.

 "Everything's going to be alright....Yeah."

And that's what the "godfather" sees when he manages to show up at the mansion. Everything's a disaster. They don't have his godson (and they need him to have the marriage annulled) and they have the most uncooperative person in the world as their only hope of finding him before the Zakharov's arrive (which won't be good even if Toros and crew manage to accomplish everything the parents want).

Anora is several things but running in ironic circles. It's funny, it's anarchic, it's dramatic, and it's a bit of a tragedy. It's also a character study. Because as finely drawn as the cluster of characters is, the whole thing revolves around Ani—Anora—and how she copes (and doesn't) with the situation while losing what she considers a good situation. She wants the fairy-tale (okay, he's an oligarch's son and not a king's, so the world's not perfect, okay?) and fights for it, even when she's way over her head. She's not a "hooker with a heart of gold" except for this one guy, and as cynical and worldly as she appears she's a sucker for her own happy ending. She's not helpless, not by a long shot, but she won't be anybody's victim, either. And as coarse and as conniving as she can be, you root for her all the way. Madison's performance goes a long way in accomplishing that.

This isn't Pretty Woman—it's a much more raw world, where few things are implied and the language is "persistent" (I think it gives The Wolf of Wall Street a run for its money in "f" bombs), not is it coy about sex, or even romantic about it. But, it has the verve and the sting of a Preston Sturges movie that pokes at your assumptions and makes you laugh at them at the same time. It's a comedy with the DNA of a drama and you may be questioning why you're laughing at what's being portrayed, but Sean Baker has made the kind of movie that keeps you on the fence while wondering about what could happen next.

 

Anora hooks you.

"Really? You ended with THAT line?"

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.