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Emilia Perez (2024) dir Jaques Audiard A multi award-nominated musical about a Mexican drug baron who always felt they were a woman born in a man's body. She fakes her own death and has gender reassignment, plus a lot of other plastic surgery, to start a new, better, life in a new identify. She is assisted in all this by her lawyer, Rita and tries to re-establish some sort of relationship with her wife Jessi and kids. Emilia is played by Karla Sofia Gascon (a trans woman) and has been nominated for best leading actress in the Oscars and Baftas. But I would say it is Zoe Saldana, as Rita, who is the main character. Both she and Selana Gomez, as Jessi, have picked up (supporting actress) nominations, as has the director, makeup artists, composers, producers, writers and others in technical roles. It could win all of those. I don't think it will, but I haven't seen that many films released last year yet. It seems to be one that you either love or hate. I suspect a lot of the hate is coming from people who are anti-trans and can't see past that aspect of the film. I liked it, the music and cinematography in particular. The acting was good, but I'm not sure if it was award-winningly good. I also think the script could have been better. It's just over 2 hours long but because it has so many musical scenes that, as is usually case in musicals, don't advance the plot the way spoken dialogue would, it felt to me like it ought to have been longer to fill in some missing details. The musical numbers were good though, sort of similar to a Baz Lurhman film, in that the actors singing them do not necessarily have a great singing voice but also with some scenes that just burst into a massive dancing and singing show that then goes back to dialogue afterwards. And a lot of it is not musical at all. There were a couple of cheesy scenes; one in-particular in a Thai gender reassignment clinic that Rita is checking out before finding the right one, did not make much sense to me. Maybe they were trying to say “this is the popular image of a s*x-change clinic, but in reality it's something far more serious”? Another slightly weak plot element is that Jessi does not recognise her former husband after the surgery. Of course that surgery has made some massive physical changes, that was the point, but even so, would you not pick up on some characteristics of a person you have been married to for years and had kids with? I can forgive that though, put it down to artistic license, in the same way I forgive William Shakespeare frequently making his characters unrecognisable to their friends and family just by doing their hair different and wearing a hat! 8 / 10

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