theartsdesk Q&A: director Jacques Audiard on his Mexican trans gangster musical 'Emilia Pérez'

Jacques Audiard – creator of such subversive crime dramas and alternative romances as Read My Lips (2001), The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005), A Prophet (2009), and Rust and Bone (2012) – isn’t an aficionado of film musicals. But in blending one into his comic Spanish-language trans gangster thriller Emilia Pérez, the 72-year-old director has made the most beautiful aberration of his career.

Set in Mexico and originally to be filmed there, but made eventually (with virtual Mexican backdrops) in a studio near Paris, Emilia Pérez has a telenova plot, features song and dance numbers, is larded with clichés, and plastered in kitsch. 

Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, played by trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón, decides to end his career as a ruthless cartel leader and lead a more purposeful life as a woman. His gender affirmation surgery has to be done in secret, so he kidnaps Rita (Zoe Saldaña), a lawyer disillusioned with the corrupt legal system, to help him realise his plan, for which she’ll be paid a fortune.

Four years later, they meet again. Emilia, as Manitas now calls herself, desperately misses her former wife, Jessi (Selina Gomez, pictured below), and their two children. She asks Rita to bring the family back together, and also help launch a new NGO that Emilia has set up to find the remains of the victims “disappeared” by the cartels.

In an interview done during Cannes, Audiard explained how the project changed over time, his voice suggesting he was relieved to have to completed it.

Emila Pérez couldn’t be more passionate and energetic. Are you a fan of musicals?

Absolutely not. To be honest, I don't really get the genre and I don't know my way around it at all. I only like a few of them – Bob Fosse’s and Jacques Demy’s and those made in Hollywood after the Second World War, but certainly not the classics from the ‘30s and early ‘40s.

Why did you want to make a musical then?

When I started working on the project in 2019, I had an opera in mind, based on a libretto. I love opera, though I don't know much about culture in general. As early as the mid-1990s, when I was directing my second film, A Self-Made Hero [1996], I actually wanted to come up with something like Peter Brook’s The Tragedy of Carmen [1983] or The Threepenny Opera. It didn't work out back then, but the relationship between opera and film continued to fascinate me.

What challenges did you face integrating the music into the story?

Incorporating the respective genre into the story is always my approach, that's always my goal. But this time I struggled with one of the basic problems of musical comedies: I could not freely change certain scenes as I would normally have done. The music, the lyrics, and the choreography dictated the direction. I had to live with that restriction. The only choice I had was to shorten a song or leave it out completely in the edit. That meant that I had to engage intensively with the rhythm and tonal vibrations before shooting even began.

The songs become heavier the more violent the story becomes.

That's right. At the end it's a lament. The music gets darker, but softer.

Once again you shot a film in a language other than French.

Yes, I've now worked in English, Spanish, and in Tamil on Dheepan [2015]. The reason is that I am not only a fan of opera but also a book lover. When I read something in French, I am always incredibly attentive to individual words, phrases, and the tone, because I understand everything. But when I read a novel or watch a film that isn't in my own language, my perspective changes. I pay much more attention to the actors' posture and movements, their facial expressions. In my opinion, that's much more important in filmmaking than whether or not I really understand every single word

Why did you cast a trans actress, Karla Sofía Gascón, in the title role?

I couldn't have Manitas played by a man and Emilia by a woman. It had to be a transsexual actress, as simple as that. It was very important that the story of a transgender person be credibly reflected in the trans genre. All the other genres touched on by the film – soap opera, drug thriller, bourgeois comedy – are determined and controlled by Manitas' transformation.

It’s said that you can change your body, but not your soul. Do you agree?

In Emilia's case, yes. She believes that she can leave the violence behind her, but then at some point her past catches up with her. She wanted to escape her destiny, but it's not that easy. Life is not a comedy.

The number of people who go missing in Mexico as a result of drug-related crime is constantly on the rise. It's an unusual subject for a musical, wouldn't you say?

It's a very sensitive topic, no question. But I believe that when you're telling a tragic story, music – especially opera – is exactly the right form, the right medium. I travelled around Mexico a lot while we were looking for suitable locations, and there you can't avoid the reality of the missing people. The tragedy is omnipresent. I somehow breathed it all in and absorbed it. At home in Paris, the feeling was still strong, but the distance was important. It was the only way I could deal with it, also musically. If I had been there, I would probably have failed.

The music allowed me to blend the epic feeling of the narrative with the dramatic elements of reality. The songs are fully integrated into the story, they are part of the arc of suspense. It's a bit like in Demy's Les parapluies de Cherbourg [1964], which addresses the Algerian War. The songs are an integral part of the plot. They are not just intended as moments of distraction.

West Side Story would be another example.

I think the 1961 film is a gross lapse because there isn’t a single black character in the ensemble. After all, it's about the 1960s when the Civil Rights movement was happening in the USA.

When you look back on your career, do you feel you are more self-confident as a director today than you were at the beginning?

When you make your first film, you yourself write, shoot, direct and edit. It took me three films to even understand how it all works. It was only with A Prophet that a whole new world opened up for me and I felt completely at ease in the process. But as a director, you should never be overly self-confident anyway. Doubt inspires the artistic process.

Has your approach changed over the years?

No, I usually write different versions of the script first, only to discard everything later and improvise with the actors. I rehearse a lot. At this point, you might achieve something like confidence in your own work. I know it sounds paradoxical. But I have to prepare my material as precisely as possible in order to then be able to turn it completely upside down or discard it completely. However, this can sometimes be quite annoying for the people who work with me.

What's the worst that can happen?

I don't sleep very well at night. So, I use the lunch breaks on set to take a 20-minute nap. And I get a lot of ideas during that time. When I get up again, it may well be that I say: "Listen everyone, let's do it completely differently." That's why my team is always worried when I take a siesta. But they have to take the risk. I take the liberty.

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