23 August 2024.
By Neptune
EMILIA PEREZ **** (vo Spanish, some English)
This film by the celebrated, multi award-winning French director Jacques Audiard is as varied as his broad body of work. He has made vastly different films such as “Un Prophète” (a César, and a 2009 Grand Prix at Cannes) about a jailbird, “Les Olympiades” about the love lives of young Parisians, and “Dheepan”, on the plight of refugees, which took Cannes’ Palme d’Or in 2015.
His latest is a complete turnabout – an exciting thriller, as well as a musical, and a moving metaphor for the acceptance of the differences in our modern world.
A bright but struggling lawyer is abducted by the henchmen of a fierce Mexican drug lord. The drug lord, who is wanted by the police and by his competitors, asks her to help him to become a woman. He has a wife and children who need refuge away from Mexico, she has to find an expert plastic surgeon, and no one should know about his transformation, not even his family. And this crazy premise is going to turn into a musical?! Put your disbelief aside, for you are in the hands of Audiard, a master storyteller.
I won’t begin to describe everything that is in this magical tale, as you should savour it for yourselves, with all the genres involved in this work. But rest assured, you will come out of this film as high as a kite, possibly with your head spinning from the magnitude of talent involved in its creation.
And because of its artistry and its multi-layered revelations, the Cannes film festival gave Audiard the Jury Prize for his film, and the Best Actress award went to his female ensemble cast of Zoe Soldana (as the lawyer), Selena Gomez (as the drug lord’s wife), Adriana Paz (as Emilia’s new companion), and the incredible trans woman Karla Sofia Gascon as Emilia Perez (the ex-drug lord!). It’s complicated, but so rewarding.
You have to see it to believe it, in all its brilliance. This is one not to miss!
BLINK TWICE **
A waitress (Naomi Ackie) is exhilarated when a tech billionaire (Channing Tatum) takes a shine to her at one of his events and ends up inviting her to his private island for a dream vacation, along with a group of trendy characters. It’s a bit of a contemporary Cinderella tale, except it turns out to be far more vicious than your average stepmother machinations. Actually, the film shares quite a few of the ideas and dark tones of the 2022 “The Menu”, starring Ralph Fiennes as a sadistic chef on his own private island.
This thriller is Zoe Kravitz’s (daughter of Lenny and Lisa Bonet) directorial and writing debut, and it shows the 36-year-old actress has an assured, modern vision and a keen eye for momentum, colours and titillation. But the main problem, for me, is the director’s exaggerated feminist stance in that every single man in the film is a liar, a rapist and even a killer. That’s how she manoeuvres the fairytale beginning into mysterious, hellish waters. And creates a finale that is more cynical and bitter than triumphant.
This has the makings of a hit…
Superb **** Very Good *** Good ** Mediocre * Miserable – no stars
By Neptune
Neptune Ravar Ingwersen reviews film extensively for publications in Switzerland. She views 4 to 8 films a week and her aim is to sort the wheat from the chaff for readers.
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