Zoe Saldaña
Rita
Emilia Pérez
“Passion has a new name.”
2024
2h 12m
Won · Oscars 2025Won · Césars 2025Won · Golden Globes 2024Won · BAFTA 2024Nominated · Oscars 2025Nominated · Oscars 2025Nominated · Oscars 2025Nominated · Oscars 2025Nominated · Golden Globes 2024Nominated · BAFTA 2024Nominated · BAFTA 2024Nominated · BAFTA 2024
Director: Jacques Audiard
Overview
Rita, an underrated lawyer working for a large law firm more interested in getting criminals out of jail than bringing them to justice, is hired by the leader of a criminal organization.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
5 min readThe Song That Broke the Cartel
I didn’t expect to cry during a musical number about money laundering. But there I was, halfway through Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard’s fever-dream of a crime thriller, watching Zoe Saldaña’s Rita belt out a torch song while counting stacks of cartel cash. The camera lingers on her face—exhausted, exhilarated, just a little bit in love with the chaos—and suddenly, the whole film snaps into focus.
This isn’t just a story about a lawyer who gets in too deep with a drug lord. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves to survive, the roles we play until we forget who we were before the costume.
Audiard has always been a director who loves to dress up his characters in borrowed identities. In A Prophet, a young Arab man learns to navigate prison by becoming someone else. In Rust and Bone, a broken man finds redemption in the body of a woman who’s lost her legs. Emilia Pérez takes that obsession with transformation and cranks it up to operatic levels.
Here, the act of becoming someone new isn’t just a survival tactic—it’s a full-blown musical spectacle, complete with choreographed shootouts and a villain who croons about his own demise.
The film’s premise is audacious: Manitas del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), the ruthless leader of a Mexican cartel, fakes his death to transition into Emilia Pérez, a woman who just wants to live quietly. But when his past catches up with him, he hires Rita, a disillusioned lawyer, to help him disappear for good. What follows is a collision of genres—part crime thriller, part telenovela, part Broadway-style musical—that shouldn’t work but somehow does.
Or at least, it almost does.
Audiard shot most of the film on soundstages in Paris, a choice that could have felt artificial but instead gives Emilia Pérez the feel of a dream you can’t quite wake up from. The Mexico City he creates is a neon-drenched fantasia, all saturated colors and exaggerated shadows, like a Diego Rivera mural come to life. It’s a world where emotions are so big they have to be sung, where love and violence are two sides of the same coin.
Full Plot (Spoilers)
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This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThe Controversy Behind Emilia Pérez: Why the Oscar-Nominated Musical Sparked Backlash
Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez (2024) was supposed to be a triumph—a genre-bending crime musical about a Mexican cartel boss who fakes her death to transition, starring Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña, and Karla Sofía Gascón. latestnetflix.com's read is that instead, the film became as much a talking point for its off-screen drama as its 13 Oscar nominations.Here’s what went down behind the scenes.
The Karla Sofía Gascón Fallout
At the center of the controversy is Karla Sofía Gascón, who played the titular role. The backlash erupted after reports surfaced that Gascón, a cisgender actress, was cast as a trans woman—a decision critics called out for perpetuating Hollywood’s history of cis actors taking trans roles. The outrage intensified when Gascón’s past social media activity resurfaced, including a 2018 tweet where she reportedly mocked trans women. Gascón has not publicly addressed the tweet, but the fallout was swift.
Director Jacques Audiard initially defended the casting, arguing that Gascón’s performance was transformative. However, as the backlash grew, Audiard distanced himself, telling BuzzFeed it was "very hard for me to think back to the work I did with Karla" 
. Gascón, meanwhile, announced she would no longer comment on the controversy, letting the film "speak for itself" .
Co-stars Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez have stayed silent on the matter, though Saldaña’s acceptance speech at the Oscars—where she won Best Supporting Actress—did not mention Gascón .
Oscar Glory and the Silence Around the Controversy
Emilia Pérez made history with 13 Oscar nominations, just one shy of the record for most nods by a single film . Yet the wins were overshadowed by the drama. The film took home only two awards: Best Supporting Actress for Saldaña and Best Original Song for "El Mal" . At the Golden Globes, the cast’s celebratory photo—featuring Gascón front and center—drew criticism from activists who argued the film’s success came at the expense of trans representation .
Audiard later explained his silence on the controversy, saying he didn’t want to "add fuel to the fire" but acknowledged the debate was valid . Netflix, which distributed the film, has not commented on the casting backlash.
**What’s Next for Emilia Pérez?**
Despite the controversy, Emilia Pérez remains a critical darling, praised for its bold storytelling and musical numbers. But the fallout has left lingering questions: Would the film have been as celebrated if a trans actress had been cast? And will Hollywood learn from this moment?
For now, Gascón’s vow of silence means the conversation is stuck in limbo. The film’s legacy—both as a groundbreaking musical and a lightning rod for debate—is far from settled.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.