Now, 'trans' can compete with 'cis'?

Emilia Pérez (2025)

Director: Jacques Audiard

mvtimes.com/es/2024/10/29/emilia-
perez-film-musical-genre-bender/

This musical offering would not have garnered as much airtime if it had not been for an openly transgender individual who won the Best Actress awards at both the Cannes and the Oscars. Interestingly, a female actor (a cis woman) insists on being referred to strictly as an 'actor', not an 'actress'. They are particularly keen on this, demanding to be addressed as 'actors'. I suppose this does not apply to transgender actors. A quick glance at Karla Sofía Gascón's Wikipedia page states her occupation as an actress. For a transgender person, being addressed as female represents the ultimate victory of her transition. 

It continues to be one of the most nominated films of the year and the most nominated non-English language film in the Academy's history.

When it comes to the basics, this is a gangster film with a twist. The twist is that one can never conceive of a mob film as a musical. What's more, it makes the feared mobster, Manitas, want to leave it all behind to transition into becoming a woman after abandoning his wife and two children. To facilitate this, he hires an aspiring and desperate lawyer, Rita, to arrange all the medical and legal matters for him to disappear. After months of painful gender reassignment surgery and cosmetic procedures in Thailand and Israel, Manitas becomes Emilia Pérez. His wife and children are relocated to Switzerland. Manitas' death is staged.

Four years later, Manitas, now Emilia, must long for her family. She meets the family and introduces herself as Manitas' distant cousin. With the assistance of Rita, the lawyer, they relocate to Mexico City and live as one large, happy family. Trouble arises when Manitas' widowed wife rekindles her romance with an old flame. Emilia also runs a non-profit organisation that seeks justice for individuals killed by gangsters in Mexico.

Interspersed and woven into the story are actors bursting into song, occasionally with quite catchy tunes.

 

It's amusing that we used to laugh at Indian films when actors broke into song and dance back in the day. A 1932 Hindi film, Indersabha, along with its Tamil counterpart, Indrasabha, featured 70 songs. Now, Hollywood musicals are receiving awards—garnering all the nominations for highlighting the LGBTQ agenda, which is currently in vogue, though not so much for their artistic merit.

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