The French musical crime thriller film Emilia Pérez has made quite a splash this awards season, beating out some critically-adored favorites at the Golden Globes and nabbing a remarkable 13 Academy Award nominations. But upon watching the film and taking in the story, music, and overall themes, you might end up thinking something along the lines of, “This got more Oscar nominations than Lord of the Rings: Return of the King? Than The Godfather Part 2? Really?”
Though not unwatchable (there are definitely some redeeming qualities), Emilia Pérez is a lot. It’s incredibly ambitious while also being scattered and messy; its empowering message about redemption, trans resilience, and dismantling a culture of violence gets watered down by platitudes, stereotypes, and seemingly hastily-written dialogue. The story and its subsequent shortcomings in representing both trans people and Mexicans is one thing; the music is another.
Written by French singer Camille, who collaborated with her composer husband Clément Ducol, the original songs of Emilia Pérez function as they would in a Broadway musical, shedding light on the characters’ journeys and moving the plot along, like in “Por Casualidad.” Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this — La La Land helped revive the original movie-musical genre a few years ago, and several films have attempted to approach the hybrid style with risk-taking.
Emilia Pérez goes the extra mile, forgoing classical references or pop polishes, and instead leaning into hip-hop, rock, synth-pop, disco, and psychedelic music. Camille fluidly shifts through various styles, changing each song’s vibe to reflect the characters’ ongoing transformations. But much like the film’s approach to identity and culture, the music of Emilia Pérez takes a lot of risks that only occasionally pay off.
I’ve already mentioned this, but the woman who wrote these songs is French. It bears repeating because it’s completely unavoidable when watching this film and taking in the songs’ lyrical content. Camille enlisted some Spanish-speaking translators to help carry the intended meaning of each line, which, sure.
But when you take those already-translated lyrics and then translate them from Spanish to English for the subtitles, of course they start to differ and abstract from their original French forms (see: this unbelievable translation error). It’s almost a moot point to knock the songwriter for the amalgam of languages and awkward translations; in fact, you could really give her some credit for making most of the songs’ lyrics relatively coherent.