‘Emilia Perez’: Selena Gomez’s Trans Cartel Musical Is the Buzz of Cannes
Nothing about Selena Gomez’s new movie that premiered at Cannes should work.
Let's just review the plot. Stay with me here.
Emilia Perez is the mostly Spanish-language story of a lawyer, Rita (Zoe Saldaña), who is hired by a notorious cartel leader, Manitas, who has been on hormones for two years, to make secret arrangements for a gender confirmation surgery. Rita makes millions in the process. Cut to four years later: Manitas is now Emilia Perez. She is impossibly glamorous and has another task for Rita. Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón) wants the lawyer, now a success in London, to retrieve her wife, Jessi (Gomez), and children from their hideaway in Switzerland and install them in a house in Mexico City, where Emilia will pose as her own kids’ aunt. Jessi assumes that Manitas is dead and has no idea who Emilia really is, but she wants to return to get back together with the sexy Gustavo (Édgar Ramírez), with whom she had an affair. Later, Emilia, atoning for her crimes as the ruthless Manitas, opens a foundation to locate the bodies of disappeared people.