Peter Charney’s review published on Letterboxd:
To its credit, many of the more emotionally resonant moments in Emilia Pérez emerge from its musical sequences. Although there’s no clear framework for the film’s “song world”—it’s unclear why, when, or how these shifts into song occur—the songs themselves are often melodically strong and lyrically poignant. Standouts include a song where a child recalls the scent of their deceased father and a sequence in which individual stories of grief coalesce into an expressionistic portrayal of a community mourning its missing members. The movie musical’s fatal flaw, however, is that this particular story should leave no room for any heightened artificiality—especially given its focus on a trans narrative, a topic that calls for a rejection of any sense of inauthenticity. Instead, director Jacques Audiard seems to want the heightened artificiality of the “song world” to merge with the identity crisis of his melodrama plot, resulting in an inconsistent tone that fails to unify the disparate narrative and stylistic elements he half-heartedly and problematically explores.
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