'Emilia Pérez' review: Highly original movie festoons crime story with wild musical numbers

One thing nobody will ever say about writer-director Jacques Audiard’s audacious and head-spinning and lush and violent and memorable “Emilia Pérez”:

Oh, it’s THAT tired old story again.

I mean, I’m fairly certain this is the first time I’ve witnessed a cartel-themed redemption musical with an aggressively physical blend of contemporary and modern dance styles and a transgender twist. Based on Audiard’s opera libretto of the same name (which was inspired by Boris Razon’s 2018 novel “Écoute”), this a dark and wild ride that announces its brazen originality from the get-go, with characters often breaking into song and a tone that plays like a mixtape mashup of “Evita” crossed with certain works by Sergio Leone and Pedro Almodóvar and Oliver Stone, with echoes of musicals such as “Hamilton” and “Rent” and even some Busby Berkeley.

If that sounds like “Emilia Pérez” is all over the place and will likely elicit polarizing reactions from viewers, yep, that’s about right. For me, the fever-dream production numbers and the soul-stirring performances by a magnificent cast lead by Zoë Saldaña, Karla Sofia Gascón and Selena Gomez were more than enough to compensate for some whiplash-inducing turns of plot and a borderline soppy denouement.

As invaluable as Zoë Saldaña’s contributions have been to the “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Avatar” blockbuster franchises, I’m an even bigger fan of her grounded work in rough-edged fare such as “Out of the Furnace” and “The Absence of Eden,” and Saldaña taps into that dramatic skill set and demonstrates solid musical chops in arguably her best performance yet in the primarily Spanish-language “Emilia Pérez.” She plays Rita Mora Castro, a brilliant but ethically compromised defense attorney in Mexico City who specializes in winning acquittals for hardcore criminals who are almost certainly guilty.

Rita’s world hits a whole new level of danger and madness when she agrees to be a go-between of sorts for the powerful and notorious and absolutely terrifying cartel leader Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascón), who enlists Rita’s help in finding a doctor who can perform the gender confirmation surgery that will complete his transition to becoming a woman. (By this point, Manitas has been undergoing hormone therapy for some two years.) This leads to a strange and weirdly beautiful and cautionary duet between Rita and the esteemed Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir), who agrees to do the surgery while maintaining the utmost discretion. Nobody — not even Manitas’ wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their children — can know about this. The world will be told Manitas has been killed.

Cut to four years later. Rita is enjoying the high life in London when the former drug kingpin now known as Emilia Pérez pays a surprise visit and tells Rita that she cannot live without her children. She tasks Rita with traveling to Switzerland to escort her wife (who believes she’s a widow) and their children to Mexico, where they will live in Emilia’s lavish compound. (They’re told Emilia is Manitas’ cousin and that she controls Manitas’ wealth and thus the finances of Jessi and the kids.)

This is one wild leap of faith; Jessi never suspects Emilia was once her husband, though one of the children, played by Juan Pablo Monterrubio, notes in a poignant, bedtime lullaby that Emilia’s scent is exactly like Papá’s.

With some obvious and unsubtle messaging about how Emilia becomes a better person in becoming her true self, Emilia starts an NGO called La Lucecita, which is dedicated to helping family members find the remains of their long-gone loved ones who have fallen victim to the violence of the cartels. (Unspoken but understood is that Manitas’ blood-filled reign no doubt caused many of these countless and horrific deaths.) Emilia becomes a high-profile hero in the community and finds love with a widow named Epifania (Adriana Paz) who had come to her help, while the increasingly irresponsible Jessi dives into the party life and reconnects with the seedy thug Gustavo Brun (Édgar Ramírez, powerful despite an underwritten role.)

The trappings of a brutal crime thriller mesh with show-stopping musical numbers, with Saldańa, Gomez and Gascõn lighting the screen on fire with their performances, even when the material is, well, sometimes bonkers. Choreography by Damien Jalet is inspired, and the production design is a stylized wonder. (The film was primarily shot on soundstages outside Paris.) With explorations of themes ranging from identity to forgiveness to corruption and fear and self-love, “Emelia Pérez” is one of the most creative and striking films of the year.