Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” is one of the most confounding movies of 2024. Positioned by some as a strong awards contender, this contradictory and clumsy musical crime “comedy” manages to be as bewildering as it is audacious. Very few of Audiard’s big swings connect at all, and his attempts at finding a human heartbeat often come across as soapy and artificial. And that only scratches the surface of the movie’s panoply of head-scratching issues.

“Emilia Pérez” is a film that attempts to do a number of things but doesn’t do any of them particularly well. It’s a musical with no sense of rhythm; a thriller that lacks suspense; a comedy without a sense of humor; and a melodrama with no emotional spark. The performances are solid, especially from Zoe Saldaña who has always deserved more attention than she receives. But finding reasons to care about these characters shouldn’t be as hard as it is.

Saldaña plays Rita Mora Castro, an overworked and underappreciated Mexico City lawyer who receives a mysterious call from a potential client wanting to meet her. Now everything about the meeting should have set off alarms – late at night, down a side road near a newsstand. But Rita goes and is promptly hooded and thrown into a van. She’s driven out to the middle of nowhere and sat down across the table from a notorious cartel leader named Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón).

Their meeting doesn’t go where Rita or the audience would expect. Manitas is looking to have a secret sex change procedure and wants to hire Rita to covertly oversee the planning. Seizing the offer to become insanely rich, Rita accepts her task of finding a willing doctor abroad, helping Manitas stage a believable death, and relocating Manitas’ wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their two children to Switzerland. Soon Manitas is at a Tel Aviv clinic ran by Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir).

Four years pass and Rita is enjoying a comfortable life in London. But her life changes again after she has a surprise encounter with Emilia Pérez, formerly Manitas. Emilia is desperate for a family reunion and once again hires Rita to make it happen. Rita is tasked with bringing Jessi and the kids back to Mexico City. Once there, they will live with Emilia who will be posing as Manitas’ distant cousin. It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out that Emilia’s ruse can only last so long. And where it ends up going only deflates the movie more.

After reading everything up to this point you may have forgotten that “Emilia Pérez” is indeed a musical. No worries, you’ll probably forget after seeing it as well. That’s because none of the songs will stick in your memory aside from the more absurd ones. Even worse, the songs feel forced or tacked on rather than a meaningful part of the film’s identity. And while they are strangely (yet mercifully) brisk, enduring them can be chore.

As “Emilia Pérez” played out, I kept asking myself a number of questions. What’s the overall point of it all? What am I to make of its murky messaging? How am I supposed to feel about these characters, especially Emilia? And is that the best ending Audiard could come up with? Ultimately I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really care. And that’s my biggest problem with “Emilia Pérez”. Despite its admirable ambition and a terrific Zoe Saldaña performance, the film left me in a state of indifference. And that’s the last place you want to be with a movie like this.

VERDICT – 2 STARS