On paper, it looks mad as a loose wheel.
But here is it is on the screen, a musical marvel.
Of course its crazy, but Audiard has set up his impossible conjuring trick and made it work.
‘Emilia Perez’Shanna Besson
As the cleaners sing in sprightly chorus, what does she have to lose?
Nobody would mistake him for a woman.
Discretion must be enforced, given Manitas incendiary secret.
He has always wanted to be a woman.
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Not that it is just a sex change.
As Emilia Perez, Manita can become any kind of woman he wants.
Except that, as Emilia discovers, a leopard can change only so many spots.
Rita, by now a lawyer moving in wealthy circles in London, is summoned to fix it.
In 2016 he won the Palme DOr withDheepan, a sympathetic slice of social realism about illegal immigrants.
The musical is a deceptively rigorous form, trammeled by its inherent artificiality.
Emilia even manages to muster a song from beneath several layers of post-operative bandaging.
The sparkle never outshines the essential seriousness of the subject.
That subject is a tragic one.
The performances encompass that thematic depth.
Gomez, as her cast-off wife determined to live her best life, brings that unmistakable Disney zing.
The greatest plaudits, however, go to Jacques Audiard.
