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Two
recent films offer
different perspectives
on mythmaking.
Jacques Audiard's Emilia Perez, an
unexpected and oddly
exhilarating film,
details the title
character's path from
career criminal to
beloved martyr, with
many, many twists along
the way.
Conversely, Uberto
Pasolini's The Return takes
one of the foundational
myths of Western
civilization—the
return of Odysseus to
Ithaca, after ten years
of war and another ten
of wandering—and
leeches out everything
that made it
foundational.
Emilia Perez begins with Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldana), an overworked, underpaid Mexico City lawyer, being forced to defend in court a man she knows to have murdered his wife. She is sitting in her cramped apartment, seething with anger and self-hatred, when her phone rings. The voice on the other end promises her a lucrative opportunity if she goes to a certain location that night. She goes there, a bag is forced over her head, and she is driven to a mysterious location, there to come face-to-face with Manitas Del Monte, the murderous jefe of
Mexico's largest drug
cartel.
The deal Manitas offers
Rita is this: she will
arrange gender
transition surgery and
a new life for him, and
ensure that his wife
Jessi (Selena Gomez)
and two children are
moved to safety in
Switzerland. No
one, not even Jessi, is
to know that he has
become a woman, or to
know his whereabouts
after the transition is
complete. If Rita
succeeds in these
tasks, Manitas will
make her very
wealthy. If she
fails, he will kill her.
Rita performs these
tasks, searching first
in Bangkok and then Tel
Aviv for the right
surgeon and the
greatest
secrecy. Four
years later she is
living luxuriously in
London. She is
sitting at a long table
in an elegant
restaurant when a woman
at her table introduces
herself as a fellow
Mexican named Emilia
Perez. It takes
about thirty seconds
for Rita to realize
that Emilia is the
transitioned Manitas.
Emilia has
another proposition for
Rita. She misses
her children much more
than she expected, and
she wants Rita to move
Jessi and the children
back to Mexico,
creating a cover story
that Emilia is Manitas'
long-lost sister and
the children's
aunt. Jessi has
no idea who Emilia
truly is, and is not
told.
What happens next forms the crux of Emilia Perez, as Emilia is
forced to confront both the consequences of her previous actions
as a drug lord and the fact that changing her gender did not
change her imperious, vindictive personality. Overwhelmed with
remorse, she becomes an advocate for, and heroine to, the
families of "disappeared" victims of the drug war, even as she
never reveals that she created the gravesites she helps to
uncover. But simultaneously—even as she takes a new lover,
Epifania (Adriana Paz)—she cannot tolerate Jessi taking a new
lover, the thuggish Gustavo (Edgar Ramirez), and moving away,
taking the children with her.
I haven't yet mentioned that Emilia Perez is a musical. The songs
by Clement Ducol and Camille Dalmais skillfully underscore the
events of the plot and the emotions of the characters; while there
aren't any tunes that you will whistle after seeing the movie, the
songs work as an organic whole.
Emilia Perez is a movie that shouldn't work, but somehow does.
It could fairly be described as part telenovela, part Bollywood,
and part Jacques Demy, but the film's biggest influence is
Almodovar. This is obvious in the female characters and the
actors who play them, especially the transgender actor Karla Sofia
Gascon. Gascon transitions seamlessly from Manitas to Emilia in
a performance of impressive power, and Saldana and Gomez
match her every step of the way. The women of Emilia Perez are
sisters to the women in Almodovar's films, dealing in the most
fundamental ways with questions of sexuality, freedom,
oppression, and death. All these questions converge at the end,
with thousands of mourners joining Emilia's funeral procession,
paying homage to their heroine in a way that is both deserved and
ironic.
Conversely, The Return projects a muted, depressive attitude
toward the entire concept of heroism. The screenplay by Pasolini,
Edward Bond and John Collee covers the last section of The
Odyssey, with Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) washing up naked and
battered on the shores of Ithaca. All his men are dead. Ithaca is
in chaos, with a gang of vicious, freeloading suitors camping
outside the castle of Odysseus' wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche).
Telemachus (Charlie Plummer), the grown son of Odysseus and
Penelope, is in constant danger from the suitors, who want to kill
him, marry his mother, and claim the throne of Ithaca.
The first person who encounters Odysseus is Eumaeus (Claudio
Santamaria), a swineherd and Odysseus' faithful slave. Eumaeus
does not recognize his master but offers him food and shelter. No
one, in fact, recognizes Odysseus except for two. Eurycleia
(Angela Molina), Odysseus' old nursemaid, bathes him as an act of
charity to an indigent, but recognizes him from a scar he
sustained as a boy. By far the more moving recognition comes
from Argos, Odysseus' dog, who has waited for his master for
twenty years and dies happy once he is back. ("Oh, Argos, oh,
Argos," I found myself whispering during that scene.)
Penelope does not recognize her husband, but for twenty years
she has been staunchly loyal to him. She tells the suitors she will
choose among them once she finishes weaving the shroud for her
father-in-law, but undoes her weaving every night.
AIthough I am familiar with the broad outlines of Homer, I have
never read The Odyssey. I knew something was missing from The
Return, but I didn't know what. Fortunately, my sister (who
taught The Odyssey for years) and other sources have filled me
in. What The Return lacks is a sense of awe, without which The
Odyssey is nothing more than a sad story of rage, loss, and
estrangement. The Olympian gods and terrifying monsters in The
Odyssey are nowhere in The Return, and that is untrue not only
to Homer, but to Greek antiquity.
Much of the trouble with The Return is apparent in the way it
presents the character of Telemachus. Charlie Plummer is a fine
young actor, and it is not his fault that Pasolini forces him to play
Telemachus as a sullen, unpleasant brat who calls his mother a
whore. At one point, Telemachus sails off in search of his father,
which is true to Homer. What is not true to Homer is that
Telemachus returns complaining bitterly that his father cohabited
with a woman for years on another island. There is no mention
that the woman was the goddess-nymph Calypso, who held
Odysseus against his will.
Similarly, there is much talk of the rage Ithacans will feel toward
Odysseus when they learn all the men under his command have
died. There is no talk of how most of them sealed their own doom
by eating the cattle sacred to the sun god Helios, against
Odysseus' orders, which caused Zeus to kill them with a
thunderbolt.
There may be a demand for a secularist retelling of Homer, but The Return succeeds mainly in being slow and lugubrious. There
is no sense of triumph, even at the end when Odysseus, still in the
guise of a beggar, strings and fires his old bow through the holes
in a dozen axhandles, a feat none of the suitors can begin to
accomplish. The ensuing slaughter of the suitors is presented as
gratuitous and unjustified, which is altogether anti-Homer.
Odysseus is no hero here; there are no heroes anywhere in The
Return. And if there are no heroes, the story is meaningless.
The best things about The Return are the performances of
Fiennes and Binoche, reunited cinematically for the first time
since The English Patient. Fiennes is an expert at portraying
characters in extremis, sick in body and soul, and he does not
disappoint here. Neither does Binoche, who is movingly resolute
as Penelope. There are also effective performances by Santamaria
, Molina, and Marwan Kenzari as Antinous, the most sinister of
Penelope's suitors.
Emilia Perez, in its unorthodox way, has something to say about
how myths are made. The Return, on the other hand, attempts to
modernize one of the world's most venerated myths, but gives no
compelling reason for the changes it makes to that myth.
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