Fearless in its ridiculousness, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez , a cross between Mrs. Doubtfire and Sicario reimagined as a musical, hit Cannes like a tidal wave Saturday night, drawing extended rounds of applause not just at its gala premiere (where standing ovations are common) but also at its press screenings (where they’re not). It remains to be seen whether this initial burst of adoration for Audiard’s ambitious film will translate to awards from the festival’s jury, but it certainly woke up a competition that had been somewhat sleepy up until now.
Most people seem to love it, and the ones that hate it, really hate it; this ensures that we’ll be talking about it, and probably yelling at each other about it, long after the fest is over. Audiard ( A Prophet , Rust and Bone , The Sisters Brothers ) has said that he initially envisioned Emilia Pérez as an opera, which he based very loosely on one of the characters from French writer Boris Razon’s postmodern 2018 novel Écoute . It still has the energy of an opera: Not all of it is sung, but it all feels like it should be sung, with background voices rhythmically chanting, seemingly always on the verge of cracking out a melody.
In the opening scenes, we hear singsong merchants against the dark Mexico City skyline as we follow Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña), a hard-working attorney whose clients tend to be drug lords, murderers, wealthy abusers. Shopping at the store, she practices the speech she’ll give b.
