Film Review – Emilia Perez

Writer/director Jacques Audiard has enjoyed a long career filled with colorful features, including “Rust and Bone,” “A Prophet,” “The Sisters Brothers,” and “The Beat That My Heart Skipped.” He’s an exploratory moviemaker, valuing the art of dramatic complication and character encounters, finding a ripe creative challenge with “Emilia Perez.” It’s a compelling tale of a life experiencing tremendous change, but it also involves a number of characters directly connected to a secret situation. The writing (which adapts a novel by Boris Razon) follows these people as they process major shifts in reality, but Audiard doesn’t create a simple drama, turning to the power of a musical to help the personalities express themselves in highly cinematic ways. “Emilia Perez” hits a few bad notes as it unfolds, but it’s memorable work from the helmer, who delivers a passionate understanding of need, using the pressures of heartache and the lift of fantasy to detail such an odyssey. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com