Emilia Pérez shouldn’t work. First, there’s its billing as a “musical crime comedy,” a collection of genres that are rarely grouped together, let alone uttered in the same sentence. Then, there’s its premise: a Mexican cartel leader (Karla Sofía Gascón) hires a small-time lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) to assist him in getting a sex reassignment surgery in order to leave his life of crime behind and start anew as the woman he was always destined to be.
