Even its stars can’t describe ‘Emilia Pérez’: ‘Rarer than a green dog’

“Emilia Pérez” is a miracle of a film about the boldness it takes to blaze one’s own journey into uncharted territory. As its title character embarks on a gender transition that whisks her away from her violent drug-dealing past and into a placid domestic future, director Jacques Audiard concocts a dizzying Spanish-language musical whose outward bombastic flair anchors an intimate focus on the inner lives of women in contemporary Mexico.

When the movie won the actress award at this May’s Cannes Film Festival, the recognition was given to its ensemble: Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez shared the award (along with their co-star Adriana Paz). That’s no doubt because their contributions to this equally campy and earnest musical signal a truly collaborative endeavor.

Just don’t describe it as a “narco-musical.”

“I really don’t like when journalists label it that or focus just on that,” says Gascón, 52, a Spanish actor who has steadily been working in Mexico since 2009 and who famously came out as trans in 2018.

“If you think about it, there’s not much talk of drug crime here,” she adds, in her native Spanish. “There’s no narcotráfico here. It’s just not there. I just don’t understand this need by some journalists to lean into all these sensationalist headlines — narco this, trans that. I’ll say what I’ve always said: This is not a documentary.”

As the three actors pointed out while speaking to The Times on a Sunday afternoon following a Hollywood BAFTA screening, “Emilia Pérez” (in limited release Nov. 1; then on Netflix Nov. 13) is a film that is hard to distill into any one thing. Or into any neat label. Sinking into the oversized blazer she’d donned for the post-screening Q&A they’d all convened for, Gomez recalls being intrigued by what was on the page. “I kind of was like, I don’t know how this movie is going to be made, but I knew that it would be something spectacular,” she says.

Gascón, having done away with her heels for the duration of our chat, spells it out more colorfully: “When I first read the script, I thought it would never get made. Because it was so special. So weird. So different. I just never thought we’d be able to make it. I thought it was a kind of dream. But I said that if we were to make it, it’d be like ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ or something like that. I mean, it’s rarer than a green dog. It’s just not normal.”

“Then again, I’m rarer than a blue dog,” Gascón quips.

A fabulously fantastic musical about a cruel cartel leader (Gascón, in the title role) who chooses to begin a gender transition and leave behind his old life as Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, not to mention his kids and young wife, Jessi (Gomez), “Emilia Pérez” is a twisty thriller where strong-willed women (such as Saldaña’s Rita, an attorney and confidante to Emilia) cannot escape the jagged violence that lurks in every corner. It’s also a tender tale about the perils and promises of starting over that owes as much to Mexico’s trite telenovelas as it does to its big-hearted melodramas.

The story takes place in a fable-like version of Mexico, one conceived by a French filmmaker (with music written by singer-songwriter Camille and composer Clement Ducol) and shot on a soundstage in Paris. And the script was fully written out in French, English and Spanish. But for Saldaña and Gomez, the film was more grounding than you might expect — a chance for them to reconnect with their roots.

“Spanish is the first language I was spoken to,” Saldaña, 46, shares, shuttling back and forth between English and Spanish as we talk.

“My mom sang me lullabies in Spanish. So the body keeps score. There’s a recognition of home that I had started yearning for. I wasn’t actively pursuing a film like ‘Emilia Perez’ and a role like Rita, but I needed it. ‘Emilia Perez’ was a medicinal experience for me.”

The “Avatar” star is magnetic as Rita, a good-natured lawyer who soon becomes Emilia’s right hand when the two establish a nonprofit designed to help bring closure to families looking for those who have been disappeared amid Mexico’s cartel violence. In “El Mal,” a tour-de-force musical number staged at a glitzy fundraising gala, Rita sings and spits bars feverishly about the moral compromises she’s had to make to bring Emilia’s well-meaning foundation come to life.

Wearing an instantly iconic red velvet pantsuit with a white tee, Saldaña and her exacting dance moves match beat for beat with her righteous rapping. Like many of the numbers throughout “Emilia Pérez,” Rita’s anthemic set piece is a dream sequence in which the corrupt guests seated around her can’t hear her fury.

For Gomez’s role of Jessi, meanwhile, the “Only Murders in the Building” foil admits she found much in common with a young Mexican American woman who’s constantly searching for ways of being ever more comfortable — in her body, in her home, in her own language. Not for nothing is her standout number, the catchy pop tune, “Mi Camino,” an ode to self-love that finds Gomez cooing, “Quiero quererme a mí misma” (“I want to love myself as I am”)

“I knew specifically Jessi’s story was enticing for me,” says Gomez, 32, speaking to her years of experience in the public eye, “because I’ve been in those situations where you’re placed in an area and you’re like, ‘This is my environment. And I have to just revolve around whatever fits for everyone else.’ I could feel that urgency from her to break free and be her own person.”

Nevertheless, the role of Jessi is unlike anything the Emmy-nominated multi-hyphenate has done before. The character is first introduced as a narco wife (in bleach-blond dyed hair and a body-hugging dress to match) who cannot fathom the loss of her husband and moneyed lifestyle once Rita helps relocate her abroad.

Years later, Jessi is asked to return to Mexico to live with Emilia, a stranger to her but a woman who has been entrusted with giving Manitas’ surviving family everything they could ever need. Emilia, of course, has to hide her true identity from his ex-wife. It’s a gamble the film understands as key to how far Emilia has come and yet how close she wants to remain to the life she has left behind.

Even as Gomez struggled performing in a language she’s not been fluent in since she was a child, she pushed herself to find the honesty in the material. Finding such aural nuances, Audiard admits, was not particularly his strength.

“If I needed, I had people who could translate,” he says over Zoom from across town with the help of a translator himself. “But I don’t always need to understand what is being said. You need to stay in motion and in expression. You need to make music. I think what’s really interesting is the musicality of the text. The musicality of what is sung or spoken is enough.”

Some of the most piercing instances in Emilia’s journey rely on Audiard’s penchant for indelible imagery. In a pivotal scene when the audience first sees Emilia post-transition following her many gender-affirming surgeries, the filmmaker captures her in a quiet moment of complete vulnerability. As we watch Emilia clasping on her bra, readying to leave the hospital once and for all, she’s trying out her new name for size.

“Yo soy Emilia Pérez,” she says over and over again, modulating her intonation ever so slightly. As if she were trying to find the voice that’s long eluded her, a voice far removed from the raspy Brando-in-”Apocalypse Now” mixed with Stallone’s Rambo that Gascón had developed for his crime lord Manitas.

“Obviously that was a very difficult scene to shoot,” Gascón adds. “I had to laugh. I had to cry. And I was naked with all of these scars and everything else. Mentally it was quite taxing. That moment we shot from all sorts of angles. But it really was more beautiful from behind. I remember seeing the shot and telling Jacques, “This has to be the poster. It captures everything about the film.” And he had this notebook with him and he turned to me — I think I was really annoying him at this point — and he goes, “You want to direct the film? Take it!””

Such playful bickering characterized the collaboration Gascón and Audiard developed over the yearlong process of fleshing out Emilia and her story. When Audiard cast Gascón, a veteran actor who’s been working steadily since 1994, he knew he’d found a tireless co-conspirator, one who helped reimagine the role away from the young, hardened protagonist he’d first envisioned. Gascón would often spend her time away from set writing and rewriting dialogue and jotting down ideas she would text the director late into the night. She helped shape Emilia — almost in her own image.

“What I gave to Emilia was my everything,” Gascón says. “My heart and soul. One of my very first jobs was as a puppeteer in Italian and Spanish television. I remember the first time I saw one of the puppets, just laying there, a rag and a plastic head. And I gave them a voice. Gave them their soul. And then, they sort of came alive and became quite famous. I got the same feeling here. That feeling of the power of creation. There’s nothing there and then, all of a sudden, there’s life. It truly feels as if I’ve given her my all.”

Gascón only half-jokes that she is still searching for ways to get what she left onscreen. “I gave Emilia my entire soul. And I’ve had to come back and recover it for myself again, almost.”

“It was a mixture of an experiment and an experience.” Saldaña adds. “I liked the experimental side of it. And we only achieved that because Jacques was not possessive over his words, his lines. That was incredibly collaborative. But also very freeing.”

The rehearsals and workshops that took place before any shooting was done allowed for each actor to feel emboldened to voice concerns or suggestions. There was little room for improvisation on set, but the endless rewriting Audiard did on the script allowed him to incorporate helpful and insightful feedback from cast and crew alike.

“I don’t take every idea,” Audiard clarifies. “But I always listen to my actors.”

Gomez experienced that trust firsthand when an early demo written for Jessi that she deemed too racy was cut from the film. (Audiard is convinced the song may well show up in one of Camille’s future albums.) Nimble pivots were central to the entire process. Jessi’s “Mi Camino,” for instance, was never storyboarded as a karaoke number. “We had weeks of dance rehearsal for that song,” Gomez recalls. “But on the day we were shooting, Jacques just loved the karaoke. He was just like, ‘Keep going! Keep going!’”

There’s no shortage of such moments throughout “Emilia Pérez.” Many of them are rooted in the raw vulnerability Gomez, Saldaña and Gascón bring to Audiard’s maximalist musical. The frayed performances push past the film’s surreal-sounding logline and, by the time credits roll, they burrow themselves deep within the hearts of the audience.

“That’s the beauty of what this film is doing,” Saldaña says. “It doesn’t live in any one genre and yet it somehow crosses through them all.”

She recalls encountering viewers who, afterward, have been left speechless. “Words escape them,” she says. “They’re behind on their thoughts because they’re ahead with their hearts.”