Selena Gomez was finally nominated for her performance on Hulu’s Only Murders In The Building, but even if she wins, it won’t be the most prestigious award she’s earned this year. The female leads of Emilia Pérez — Karla Sofía Gascón, Adriana Paz, Zoe Saldaña, and Gomez — took home Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Jacques Audiard’s crime musical about a feared cartel leader who embraces her true identity as a woman.
“Women together — that’s something we wanted to honor when we made this award,” Barbie director and 2024 Cannes jury president Greta Gerwig said of the split win. “Each of them is a standout, but together transcendent.”
Following the positive critical response to Emilia Pérez at the film festival (it’s currently at 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), it was acquired for distribution in the United States by Netflix. But when will you be able to watch it? And what’s this about it being a “crime musical”? Here’s everything to know about Emilia Pérez, including plot details and whether there’s a release date.
Plot
Directed by Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez is about a Mexico City lawyer named Rita, played by Zoe Saldaña, who is hired by a dangerous drug kingpin named Mantis (Karla Sofía Gascón) to stage their own death so they can undergo sex reassignment surgery and begin life anew as Emilia Pérez. But years later, Emilia misses her family, including wife Jessi (Selena Gomez), and “the past begins to creep back, threatening to undo everything she and Rita have worked so hard to achieve,” according to the plot description provided by the Toronto International Film Festival.
Did I mention Emilia Pérez is a musical? Because it is. “I didn’t know if I can sing or act in the way it required,” Saldaña told The Hollywood Reporter about breaking into song. “I didn’t know I could do it but I had a decent conversation with a filmmaker who heard me, and I felt him. He was guiding me through it, and we read through a couple of scenes together, just him and I. I wasn’t sure I could follow with the songs because I’m a little tone deaf now that I’m older. He said I could do it however I wanted. I felt a connection with him and I felt it could go somewhere. When he asked me to be a part of his film, it was an opportunity for me to branch out and just showcase everything that I live with that I desire to continue accomplishing as an artist. It was so liberating.”
Audiard said that his intention for Emilia Pérez (which is loosely based on Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute) was “about the transition identity,” and even outside of the plot, it shows in how the film transitions between genres.
“I wanted the film to be set in Mexico, which I believe is a bit of a schizophrenic country, and these two elements, somehow the transition of Manitas Del Monte was Emilia Pérez, the change of gender was to be matched, in my opinion, with a change in the genre,” he explained in an interview with Collider. “Because I wanted it to be a soap opera and a musical comedy, a narcos film, something where you could not really grasp a label, something that was still very fluid. I really tried to do that in a film that was selected in Cannes, a drama that kept on changing and not being labeled.” He also had no idea that Selena Gomez was such a big deal. He does now!
Cast
Emilia Pérez stars Karla Sofía Gascón (who made history as the first trans performer to win Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival), Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña, Édgar Ramirez, Adriana Paz, and Mark Ivanir. Both Gascón and Gomez are getting legitimate Oscars buzz for their performances.
Release Date
Netflix hasn’t officially announced when Emilia Pérez will be available to watch, but reports have said it could be November.
Trailer
Below, you’ll find the Emilia Pérez trailer from French distributor Pathé.