Somewhere between a musical and a telenovela, French director Jacques Audiard’s latest film Emilia Perez pushes the boundaries of storytelling. Collecting two awards at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the film also earned recognition for its fascinating and challenging score, composed by the French duo Clément Ducol and Camille.
Emilia Perez wowed audiences in Cannes this year with its experimental hybrid form in which the entire cast sings, dances and speaks in Spanish.
Set in Mexico but filmed entirely in a studio near Paris, the film blends drama, romance, comedy and thriller elements, swinging between the incredible and the convincing.
The plot is anything but conventional. It follows Manitas, a powerful Mexican cartel boss played by transgender actress Karla Sofia Gascon, who embarks on a dangerous quest to become a woman – keeping the transformation secret from his wife (played by Selena Gomez) and children.
Daring plotline
Enter Rita (Zoe Saldana), a disillusioned lawyer roped into Manitas’s plan for a hefty sum, leading to the birth of Emilia Perez (also played by Gascon) and the unfolding of a surprise love story involving Epifania (Adriana Paz).
This unpredictable and daring scenario convinced musicians Clément Ducol and Camille to join Audiard’s ambitious project.
Although they didn’t know Audiard personally, they were recommended by a friend familiar with Ducol’s work on the Annette soundtrack, the opening film at Cannes in 2021.
“I love trying new things,” Ducol told RFI after the premiere in May. “In this job you have to bounce back and learn all the time ... again and again, it was a crazy adventure.”
Room for experimentation
Ducol recalls how the project began with just the outline of an idea inspired by Boris Razon’s story Ecoute (Listen).
“None of us had ever made a musical,” Ducol admitted, but the team found their way, benefiting from Audiard’s (Palme d’Or in 2015 for Dheepan) collaborative approach, with plenty of room for exploration.
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Working closely with scriptwriter Thomas Bidegain, the team watched classic film musicals and spent hours experimenting in the studio. As the script evolved, so did the music, with melodies and lyrics crafted to complement the storyline.
“These are people are so inspiring. We can innovate with them thanks to the way they merge dance, music, staging and image together,” Ducol enthuses.
“These are people so inspiring, allowing us to innovate by merging dance, music, staging and image,” Ducol enthused.
Camille echoed this sentiment, saying she was immediately drawn to the story’s Shakespearean echoes, particularly its themes of transformation – whether emotional, metaphorical or physical.
“I believed in the project immediately because it fundamentally shows what theatre is all about,” she says.
“And transsexuality for me speaks so much about the freedom that there is in theatre and in deciding to change within our bodies. It really fits into the history of humanity. Within the body, you decide, you change.”
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Despite not speaking Spanish, Ducol found the language’s musicality and rhythm helpful in composing the score. Camille, with only high school-level Spanish, convinced Audiard she could manage, even singing a song in Spanish at their first meeting.
She worked closely with a Mexican translator on set and credited the diverse cast – Gomez, Saldana, Gascon, and Paz – with enriching the film’s cultural authenticity.
The collective effort paid off, with Emilia Perez winning the Jury Prize and Best Actress Award (shared by the four lead actresses) at Cannes.
The film also took home the Cannes Soundtrack prize, a sidebar award chosen by a panel of independent journalists.
Represented by Sacem, the French copyright agency, Ducol and Camille were thrilled to highlight the role of music in the film’s success.
Emilia Perez would certainly not be the same without the score.
Guiding the audience with a lament, a lullaby or a punchy dance number, the infectious energy lingers long after the final notes.
Emilia Perez was released in France on 21 August, 2024.
