Emilia Perez (2024) Beloved BQ visitors well know how much we hate Academy Award Suck-Up films.....
You know the ones.....the unwatchable slogs that sit up and beg for their Oscars like needy puppies in search of bacon treats.
While nominations fall into their laps, us hardy cinema warriors duly submit ourselves to the mind-numbing agony of sitting through them.
A tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.
Once again, we settled our stomach, steeled our nerves for a viewing of 'Emilia Perez' on its Netflix home.
We'll give it this much at least.....unlike "Power Of The Dog" which almost propelled us into a deep coma, 'Perez' was lively and weird enough to keep us awake for its entirety.
And the movie? It struck us that it's like a Ken Russell film, only with lousy music.
Who's Ken, you ask? Through the 70's, he was Britain's resident madman director who thrilled and outraged audiences with his over-the-top, Krazytown films like "Tommy", "The Music Lovers", "The Devils", "Lizstomania", "Lair Of The White Worm" and so many others......
In a Russell film, excess ruled.....in the music, costumes, sets and scenery chewing actors.
That's why 'Perez' reminded us so much of his work. The overheated storyline, the sudden eruptions into fantasy musical sequences, the actors busting their blood vessels as they dive in to the visual chaos surrounding them.
Set in Mexico, it unfolds like a frenzied, drawn out version of a Grand Opera telenova.....a swirling mixture of gender identity, cartel brutality, fierce parental love and boiling passions.
While you're watching it, the film may give you the impression you're experiencing something groundbreaking, unique.....especially with its exuberant bursts into song and dance.
But by the time it grinds to a merciful halt, we realize that all the visual pyrotechnics have been in service of ludicrous, cornball melodrama, nothing but a colossal soap opera. Smoke and mirrors to disguise its limited, low intentions.
We start with a harried prosecutor (Zoe Saldana) who accepts an offer she can't refuse from a cartel kingpin (Karla Sofia Gascon). Kingpin wants an all new life......as a woman.
Saldana handles all the paperwork and logistics to facilitate Kingpin's emergence as hefty Emilia Perez. Longing to still love and cherish his/her children, Emilia passes herself off as a long lost aunt to the kids and Kingpin's distraught confused wife. (Selena Gomez).
In a further twist, Emilia, her hormones now surging with empathy and love, dedicates herself to aiding surviving families of cartel victims. But when Gomez takes a new lover she intends to marry, things go.....as you knew they would, wildly awry.
Or as Thelma Ritter so ably put it, in "All About Eve",...."everything but the wolves yappin' at her heels..."
We don't know how to judge the work of the three lead actresses. They seem to try their best to navigate their way through the flashy cinematics, and the instantly forgettable scraps of music they're forced to sing. But director Jacque Audiard doesn't exhibit all that much interest in them anyway - he's all about showing off to help him collect awards.
Plus there's no need to add more vitriol than has been already spilled on Selena Gomez's way-beyond-her-ability performance and misjudged stabs at phonetically spouting Spanish. Even a more skilled actress fluent in the language couldn't have done much better with this borderline silly material.
As for the motion picture Academy.....13 nominations for this? Seriously? We'd rather they not lavish thoroughly undeserved Oscars on 'Perez' as a way to provoke LGBTQ-Hater-In-Chief Donald Trump. Really, Academy voters, there's better ways to make your opinions heard than anointing this phoney-baloney culture vulture sludge with foolish accolades it didn't earn.
1 star (*).
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