Review Roundup: EMILIA PEREZ Musical Starring Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldana

Emilia Perez is now streaming on Netflix and critics are weighing in on the musical fever dream which stars Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, and Selena Gomez. 

Through liberating song and dance and bold visuals, this odyssey follows the journey of four remarkable women in Mexico, each pursuing their own happiness. The fearsome cartel leader Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón) enlists Rita (Zoe Saldaña), an unappreciated lawyer stuck in a dead-end job, to help fake her death so that Emilia can finally live authentically as her true self.

Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, the film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May, receiving five nominations and winning three awards, including Best Actress and Best Soundtrack. The movie was released on Netflix on November 13 in the US, Canada, and the UK following a theatrical release in select theaters on November 1. Find out what critics think below!

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Wendy Ide, The Guardian: "The film’s messaging on female empowerment and living authentically might border on the trite. The means of delivering that message, however, does at least feel genuinely fresh and new."

Peter Dubruge, Variety: "Audiard’s dazzling and instantly divisive film — which stars Zoe Saldaña as the lawyer who helps Manitas transition and Selena Gomez as the mother of their two sons — doesn’t strictly adhere to the codes set by GLAAD and other LGBT advocates, and yet, “Emilia Pérez” emerges as a powerful, unfiltered portrait of someone who challenges several stereotypes at once."

Siddhant Adlakha, Mashable: "Above all else, the film's four leading ladies are perfectly attuned to Audiard's volatile mixture of operatic emotion and naturalistic cinematic influence. The result is a dazzling, dramatic high-wire act that's always fun to watch, and is frequently invigorating, too."

Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly: "Despite a slow start and its wildly varying tones, Emilia Pérez works best when you give yourself over to its harried, shaggy magic. It's an ambitious, provocative, big swing of a picture — and if it's not always a home run, at least it manages to consistently get on base."

Brian Truitt, USA Today: "The stellar acting and assorted songs boost much of the familiar elements in "Emilia Pérez,” creating something inventively original and never, ever bland."

Tom Gliatto, People: "It’s a wild, genre-bending ride, a musical that sizzles with outrageous passion and outrageous camp...One complaint: For a musical, the songs are too brief, too small, to convey much. Imagine if West Side Story were hummed."

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: "Some Francophile cinema fans keep hoping that Audiard will make another searing drama like A Prophet or Rust and Bone, but any filmmaker who declines to repeat himself and instead keeps experimenting and pushing in new directions should be applauded. With Emilia Pérez, he has made something fresh, full of vitality and affecting, held aloft by its own quietly soaring power."

Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline: "...how could Emilia Pérez be anything but a hot mess? But here is it is on the screen, a musical marvel. Of course it’s crazy, but Audiard has set up his impossible conjuring trick and made it work.

Stephanie Zacharek, Time: Audiard’s film is a challenge to find the beginning that comes after the end. It’s not about trans possibility, but about human possibility. Because they’re one and the same.

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