GENRE-BENDING CRIME SAGA

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez explores themes of identity and transformation

-  Manohla Dargis

In the floridly off-kilter Emilia Pérez, director Jacques Audiard throws so much at you — gory crime-scene photos, a menacing cartel boss, a singing and dancing Zoe Saldaña — that you don’t quite blink, almost.

A present-day Mexico City, the fast-track story follows a beleaguered lawyer, lita (a very good Saldaña), who’s hired by a powerful drug lord, Manitas (a wonderful Karla Sofía Gascón), for an unusual job: Manitas, who presents as a man but identifies as a woman, wants help with clandestinely obtaining gender-affirming surgery and with tidying up some of the complications that come from a violent enterprise.

Audiard, a French filmmaker and critical favourite with a string of impressive credits, likes changing it up. He’s partial to people and stories on the margins; though is especially drawn to crime stories: much of one of his finest films, A Prophet, takes place in prison. He also likes imbuing his art with genres while playing with, and, at times, undermining their conventions, embracing an unorthodoxy that can extend to his characters. The protagonist in The Beat That My Heart Skipped, for one, is an outright thug but one who would be content putting, at one point, shows up at a capital fund-raiser after neatly beating another man to death.