“i’m not here by chance.”

i’ll give audiard this: this is at the very, very least not a totally uninteresting movie, because i think making a movie this truly, bizarrely, bafflingly misguided at damn near every possible turn is almost kinda impressive in its own sort of way. hell, when this isn’t being awkwardly edited together, there’s a lot of wacky, colorful dancing camerawork that is occasionally intriguing to watch, the cast, especially saldana, is certainly giving it their all and doing what they can, and there’s, like, two, maybe even three musical numbers here that held my attention. but even if this wasn’t a horrifically naive and eventually quite cruel portrait of a trans woman—in which her entire existence is defined by her pre-transition self, her children still smell their “papa” that smells like “mountains and leather and coffee and car engines” despite her having started transitioning more than six years earlier, her voice gets lower and gravelly and “masculine” when she’s angry, and she’s literally locked off screen for the ending in which the focus is returned to her wife who realizes “who she actually is” and oh so heroically reclaims/deadnames her—this is a strong contender for the most excruciatingly incompetent musical i’ve ever seen. even if they didn’t all begin and end as jarringly and unnaturally as possible, there just isn’t a single song in this that has any sort of memorable lyricism (at least not in a good way) or even a semblance of something catchy melodically—there’s a bit in this where people are loading and passing around guns in a way that’s clearly supposed to be rhythmic percussion that is so fucking horrible it genuinely just made me upset. one of the absolute worst movies of the year, can’t wait for it to win five oscars. (edit: 2 for 13 lmao, get fucked jacques audiard you hack)

28