The French musical crime thriller movie Emilia Pérez has made fairly a splash this awards season, beating out some critically-adored favorites on the Golden Globes and nabbing a exceptional 13 Academy Award nominations. However upon watching the movie and taking within the story, music, and general themes, you would possibly find yourself considering one thing alongside the traces of, “This obtained extra Oscar nominations than Lord of the Rings: Return of the King? Than The Godfather Half 2? Actually?”
Although not unwatchable (there are undoubtedly some redeeming qualities), Emilia Pérez is quite a bit. It’s extremely formidable whereas additionally being scattered and messy; its empowering message about redemption, trans resilience, and dismantling a tradition of violence will get watered down by platitudes, stereotypes, and seemingly hastily-written dialogue. The story and its subsequent shortcomings in representing each trans folks and Mexicans is one factor; the music is one other.
Written by French singer Camille, who collaborated along with her composer husband Clément Ducol, the unique songs of Emilia Pérez operate as they might in a Broadway musical, shedding mild on the characters’ journeys and transferring the plot alongside, like in “Por Casualidad.” In fact, there’s nothing inherently fallacious with this — La La Land helped revive the unique movie-musical style a couple of years in the past, and a number of other movies have tried to strategy the hybrid fashion with risk-taking.
Emilia Pérez goes the additional mile, forgoing classical references or pop polishes, and as an alternative leaning into hip-hop, rock, synth-pop, disco, and psychedelic music. Camille fluidly shifts by way of varied kinds, altering every tune’s vibe to mirror the characters’ ongoing transformations. However very like the movie’s strategy to identification and tradition, the music of Emilia Pérez takes a number of dangers that solely sometimes repay.
I’ve already talked about this, however the girl who wrote these songs is French. It bears repeating as a result of it’s fully unavoidable when watching this movie and taking within the songs’ lyrical content material. Camille enlisted some Spanish-speaking translators to assist carry the meant that means of every line, which, positive.
However whenever you take these already-translated lyrics after which translate them from Spanish to English for the subtitles, after all they begin to differ and summary from their unique French varieties (see: this unbelievable translation error). It’s virtually a moot level to knock the songwriter for the amalgam of languages and awkward translations; the truth is, you may actually give her some credit score for making a lot of the songs’ lyrics comparatively coherent.