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From the Mexican cartel leader to the operating table in Tel Aviv – Israel Culture

“Emilia Perez,” a film now playing in theaters across Israel, is a mess of a film that seeks to offer the fun of a musical telenovela with a trendy story about a drug cartel leader who undergoes an operation earlier than Sex reassignment surgery was now referred to as gender-affirming surgery.

The style is Pedro Almodovar meets Baz Luhrmann, a film where production design and visual flourishes hold your attention more than the plot or characters.

But for Israeli moviegoers, there is a unique plot that takes the main characters to Tel Aviv, which is shown as the target the cartel leader chooses – among many – for her operation.

A no-nonsense surgeon, Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir, a Ukrainian-born Israeli actor known to international audiences for his work in Schindler's List, Homeland, Away and many other roles) gets the cartel leader, initially called Manitas (Karla). Sofia Gascon), whose name is later changed to Emilia, goes into more detail about his reasons for undergoing the procedure.

This film, which had its world premiere at Cannes in 2024 (where it won the Jury Prize and Best Actress for its four main actors), was probably made before the outbreak of the current war, but it is still interesting that it chose to to clearly present this Israeli doctor and his clinic in Tel Aviv in a positive light. This was an unusual choice, and it's worth noting that director and co-screenwriter Jacques Audiard (known for films like “A Prophet” and “Dheepan”) has visited Israel in the past to promote his work.

Tel Aviv skyline 370 (Source: Thinkstock/Imagebank)

Israeli accents in the film

While the scenes in the Tel Aviv clinic were filmed in a studio somewhere rather than Israel, this sequence has a real touch of Israeli atmosphere: a television in the clinic shows a clip of Shauli and Irena, the not-too-bright Israeli couple the comedy sketch show website Eretz NehederetIsrael's version of Saturday Night Live. This scene got the biggest laugh of the entire film from the audience I saw it with.

Although the film is billed as a musical comedy, there weren't too many laughs in the often visually arresting but mostly uninvolving story about Rita (Zoe Saldana, one of those blue creatures in “Avatar”), a lawyer who defends her for a living violent men – early on we see her ensuring that a man who murdered his wife is exonerated – and who is chosen by Manitas to discreetly arrange his operation. Rita sends Manitas' young American wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their children to Switzerland, saying they must be safe there and that Manitas has been killed.

Four years later, Rita meets the former cartel boss in London, who is now called Emilia. Emilia, longing for her children, persuades Rita to go back to work for her and bring Jessi and the children back to Mexico City, where she is hiding as a woman. Jessi and the children aren't too happy about the move, having become accustomed to the snowy luxury of the Swiss Alps, but they adapt and rather modestly accept that Emilia is an aunt they've never met before.

When Emilia is reunited with her children, she blossoms and persuades Rita to stay. Rita, who favored unflattering pantsuits for success in the first scenes, begins to dress more femininely, wearing tiny silk halter tops, perhaps reminiscent of the outfits worn by drug dealer Nancy Botwin in the series Weeds.

Filled with the goodness that a successful gender confirmation procedure can bring, according to the film's narrative, Emilia begins devoting her time and ill-gotten wealth to helping find the bodies of the approximately 100,000 Mexicans who who have disappeared as a result of criminal violence, bringing closure to their families.

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Emilia's kindness is its own reward, but there is another to come, and she begins a romance with Epifania (Adriana Paz), a woman who is actually relieved to learn that her abusive, missing husband is dead and she has nothing left can wear.

At the same time, Jessi has moved on to Gustavo (Edgar Ramirez, who played Gianni Versace in American Crime Story), who wants to marry her and adopt her children. Emilia is not happy to learn that she will lose her children again if the marriage goes through, and it turns out that running afoul of a former drug cartel leader isn't even that easy.

The cast sings many songs, most with very literal lyrics about the story's content, and performs several dance numbers. These will enchant some, but for many moviegoers they will grow tiresome very quickly. Selena Gomez, known as both a singer and an actress, is entertaining when she sings and there is a very poignant and visually effective lament from the families of the disappeared that really hits home, especially as we are still hoping for the return of the 101 hostages who remain trapped in Gaza. But at other times it seems that the songs and dances were inserted to cover up the fact that the story has slowed down.

Although the four leading actresses, Saldana, Gomez, Gascon and Paz, shared the best actress award at Cannes, their work is only intermittently entertaining. Gomez, as mentioned, can sing and stars as a spoiled but neglected wife, and Gascon and Paz are tasteful lovebirds. As a lawyer, however, Saldana is pale. When she sings and dances at a fundraiser for rich hypocrites and supposedly crashes the show, she comes across as an incredibly serious dance student rather than someone you can't stop watching.

It's also worth noting that, apart from the scenes with the Israeli doctor, the film is in Spanish and has Hebrew titles. It's rare for films with mainstream actors to be made in a language other than English, so this was a nice touch that added to the atmosphere.

The film is largely set in Mexico City, and the look is often reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, which was also set there, while the larger-than-life figure of the reformed drug lord, now a woman, could have come straight from an Almodovar film .

The vibrant but crumbling setting depicts a city steeped in violence and corruption, but also a kind of raw beauty that sometimes shines through unexpectedly. It's a shame that the spirit of this fascinating city isn't more clearly expressed in the simple, virtuous plot.



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