Emilia Pérez States Its Case Right Away

The film's impressive opening number drops you into a world of corruption and chaos.

- Paula Aceves

JACQUES AUDIARD'S genre-melding noir musical, Emilia Pérez, opens with a plea. Zoe Saldaña as Rita, a jaded defense attorney for white-collar criminals, is writing her closing argument, asking the jury to exonerate her client, a corrupt bureaucrat accused of pushing his wife off a balcony. But the following musical number, a grand procession through the streets of Mexico City, also functions as a plea to the viewer-to buy in, to accept the film's idiosyncratic world, one where Rita quickly gets entangled with a drug lord (Karla Sofía Gascón) seeking genderaffirming surgery. "From day one, there was this understanding that if we didn't manage to make that scene convincing," says choreographer Damien Jalet, "we would lose the audience."

Zoe Saldaña performing "El Alegato."

Like the rest of the film, which "ranges from being a telenovela to a narco movie to a family drama," says Audiard, the songcalled "El Alegato," which translates to plea-doesn't fit cleanly into any category. It is both a rap and a power ballad, an orchestral anthem and a techno remix. "This fucker kills his wife," Rita begins in an almost ominous whisper, typing at her desk, her face lit by a screen airing coverage of ongoing protests against femicide, "and we allege suicide."