“There’s one thing that has happened to me with age and with maturity,” Karla Sofía Gascón, star of Netflix’s Emilia Pérez, told me. “And that is that I have acquired something that I think all human beings desire and is very, very difficult to achieve. That is the freedom to be yourself and not have to see or need anything from anyone.”
Amen sista! If there is a moment tailor-made for a pitch-perfect mic drop, it is that one right there. Latina Media Co sat down with the Spanish actress the morning after the Los Angeles premiere of her film Emilia Pérez.
“And that’s the opposite of what happens with Emilia and with ‘Manitas’ [her name before transitioning] who need to pretend that they are another person in order to survive in this world. That’s what happens to all of us human beings in the end, that we’re pretending all the time that we are something that we’re not.”
But, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Emilia Pérez is quite possibly the most unique, creative, and artful movie these grandes ojos marrones have ever been blessed with. When I tell you it’s a French-directed film about a Mexican cartel drug lord who undergoes a sex reassignment surgery to become Emilia Pérez and then tells her story through song and dance like a Broadway musical, I am not being facetious.
Gascón is Manitas, the aforementioned cartel jefe. She hires Rita Castro (Zoe Saldaña), a lawyer, to help her bury her past and plant a new future. Jessi (Selena Gomez) is Manitas’ wife and mother of their two sons. She is not in on the plan, though she is certainly in on the singing and dancing in the film. Later, we meet Epifanía (Adriana Paz) who later becomes Emilia’s lover.
“In my career, very few times I’ve had the opportunity to play characters that have Latin origins,” Zoe Saldańa told Latina Media Co. “So to play the role of Rita in this amazing, special movie, Emilia Perez, and to be able to combine so many forms of art that I’ve known to do my whole life was incredibly rewarding.”
The film is dripping in contradictions in all the best ways. Few of those contradictions are as prevalent as freedom in one’s own femininity. Intended or not, Emilia Pérez finds a way to point out the freedom that comes with being a man. And conversely, the restrictions that come along with being a woman. This is a situation that Gascón knows intimately.
“Talking about that freedom, yes,” she said. “Obviously, in the end, I always had it clear since I started with this character. That masculinity in the world is much more linked to physical freedom and femininity to mental freedom.” Gascón went on, “It is true that in the masculine part, he is much more free physically, and in the feminine part, she is much stricter and always wants to be perfect. It shouldn’t be like that, but it is. And that is something that I think we have to solve in our Western society.”
Emilia Pérez has absolutely slayed at every festival or screening it has played at since premiering. At Cannes, all four female leads won the Cannes Best Actress Award. That’s right, four actresses shared a single award. And that was absolutely the right decision. Every premiere has seen standing ovation after standing ovation. At the NYFF premiere of Emilia Pérez, lead actress Karla Sofia was herself by the reception.
I wish I could go on and on about any number of marvels in this movie. The choreography, the changes in each woman and yes, even the comedic moments in Emilia Perez deserve their own space.
There’s a line that Manitas sings to Rita in the beginning of the film. It goes, “I don’t lack a voice. But, I lack singing.” Well familia, I am here to sing! Emilia Pérez is my #1 film of 2024!
I am exercising my freedom to love this film and all of those in it without needing anything from you – essso!
Emilia Pérez is streaming on Netflix ahora!
*Writers note: I did my interview with Karla in Spanish and translated it for this English readership. I may have lost some of the corazon of the conversation, but know that I was impressed.
