Emilia Pérez | Feelings are the true measure of identity

^{Emilia Pérez Movie Review | Image Source}

Has it ever occurred to you that a person's soul could be matched with the wrong body?

The movie “Emilia Pérez” invokes deep thoughts and feelings that has gotten me to question so many things and become more accommodating of lots of modern ideas around “identity.”

By “Identity” I am referring to what's formally considered gender which has been a subject of intense debates in recent years.

Generally speaking, there's been a number of additions when it comes to “gender identities” due to newer concepts, but my focus here is on the foundational terms, which is male and female.

What's invoked by the movie “Emilia Pérez” runs contrary to the biology of humans. This is to say that though biology may conclude that a person is male or female, there are more complex underlyings that could challenge that.

When a person is born a biological male or female, but feels and acts the opposite, the world may consider it a mental illness but one cannot really prove it a health defect.

By keeping an open mind while watching the movie “Emilia Pérez” I found myself leaning on the immaterial essence of a person, more commonly referred to as a soul, which from a religious, psychological, and philosophical view is considered the inner self or identity of a person.

Now before I expand more on that, let's quickly look at what the movie itself is about.

About Emilia Pérez

Emilia Pérez is a French musical crime film whose story centers on Manitas Del Monte, a Mexican drug cartel leader who seeks to escape his criminal past and live authentically as a woman named Emilia Pérez. With the help of lawyer Rita Mora Castro, Manitas fakes his death, undergoes gender-affirming surgery, and begins a new life as Emilia.

Years later, Emilia tries to reconnect with her estranged family and atone for her violent past by helping victims of cartel violence.

Thoughts Thoughts Thoughts

Although this is a French production, the language used is Spanish given that the story is set in Mexico and revolves around Mexican characters.

Usually, I'm not one to look up the personal lives of characters but I did for Emilia Pérez and learning that she is an actual transgender made her role feel more real and consistent.

This is a 2 hr+ movie with musical scenes here and there, so I wouldn't want to focus on the storyline but will jump right ahead to scenes that spoke to me.

I'd admit, I almost didn't watch this to the end as I usually find it a little difficult to keep up with a story reading the subtitles. This makes me often focus on movies where English is the spoken language, but I was intrigued and effectively persuaded to continue by the first scene where Rita, the lawyer receives a call that informs her to make a murder case into suicide as a testimony was withdrawn last minute.

In her words: “This prick kills his wife and we call it suicide.”

^{Emilia Pérez Trailer | YouTube}

Rita goes on to make the case but hates herself for it. This is revealed as she goes on soliloquizing, then singing about her life and the pains of her career of defending corrupt persons.

This is something rather very common in this line of profession so what really got me intrigued was Rita’s ability to fully make this “reality” that people like her have to live with be felt by the viewers.

What's interesting about my choice of watching this film is that I didn't even bother to read the about, I only looked at the ratings and genre, so generally speaking, I didn't know what to really expect.

Rita’s argument in defense won the case and this sort of set the stage for her to be recognized by more corrupt persons, one of which was Manitas Del Monte, the drug cartel leader.

Her first contact with Manitas Del Monte comes after she receives an anonymous phone call from a man who tells her to be at the newsstand in 10 minutes if she wants to be rich.

She questions what she has to lose before deciding to go to the newsstand where she's abducted by Manitas’s men and taken to see him.

Her meeting with Mr. Del Monte was intense, not because he was a dangerous drug cartel leader but because Manitas reveals his desire to be a woman and the reasons behind his decision to undergo a transition in a way that invokes an emotional response from viewers.

Although, his reasons were revealed in a second meeting after Rita had already met with a Surgeon who tried to advise against transitioning with the argument that “he only fixes the body but will never fix the soul” adding that a he will always be a he and a she will always be a she despite physical changes.

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Rita challenges his arguments by saying that changing the body changes society and this in turn changes the soul.

This conversation was done through a song which made it even more entertaining.

Rita’s argument leans on how “perception” influences what's “real” and in this case, changing the body influences society's perception.

My personal opinion however is that yes, changing the body doesn't change the soul, but if the soul already feels different from what the body is, then changing the body only helps it align.

The body is merely a carrier of what transcends human comprehension.

The surgeon of course agrees to the terms, goes on to meet Mr. Del Monte, performs the surgery and Rita helps fake his death, taking his Wife Jessi and children to a safe location away from him, enabling him to become Emilia Pérez.

One scene that was most emotional for me was when Manitas, now Emilia Pérez, made her way back into the lives of her wife Jessi and children as an aunt and one night, one of her kids said she smelled like his father, revealing how much he had missed him.

Emilia Pérez was a very intense watch that explored in great length the struggles of a soul trapped in a body it doesn't identify with.

This one is truly recommendable and was worth the 2 hours spent on it.