Some people will walk away from their viewing of Emilia Pérez with one of its many musical numbers stuck in their heads. I left with a different fixation permanently playing on a loop: the image Selena Gomez in character as Jessi, standing in the Swiss snow in a gigantic Saint Laurent fur coat.
Jessi is not quite the main character of this story. That honorific goes to the titular Emilia Pérez, who secretly transitions to become a woman after leading a notorious Mexican drug cartel in the former identity of Juan “Manitas” Del Monte. But Jessi, who was married to Manitas, is a pivotal player in the operatic saga. Without getting too deep into spoilers of how their relationship unravels, her coat in that Swiss mountainside scene strikes an important tone. In all its strong-shouldered, extra-textured glory, it's a symbol of her character's own transformation in the Cannes Film Festival-favorite feature. It's also the rare cinematic universe garment that made me want to shop, just based on the look-at-me silhouette alone.
