For the Characters of ‘Emilia Pérez’ to Evolve, So Too Did the Filmmakers

Mark Peikert

Tue, December 10, 2024 at 12:16 AM UTC

8 min read

For the Characters of ‘Emilia Pérez’ to Evolve, So Too Did the Filmmakers

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“Emilia Perez,” the bold and stylish musical from director Jacques Audiard starring Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Zoe Saldana, is pure cinema. Riffing on genres with ease and abandon, the musical is, at various turns, a drug cartel drama, a trans coming out story, a family drama, a love story, and an action film. Not to mention a French film in Spanish made by filmmakers who had never before worked on a musical. That meant every member of the team had to stay open to the innate rhythms of the story being told, no matter the genre.

“This film was acting like a very wild animal, you know,” sound supervisor and re-recording mixer Cyril Holtz told IndieWire. “So we had to adapt always. The process was really for us experimental. It was really like planting seeds and ideas and [letting] them grow. The essential was to get something emotional at the end. We always had that in mind.”

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The storyline itself is complex: Manitas (Gascón), a dangerous drug cartel leader, contacts young attorney Rita (Saldana) about serving as a go-between to schedule gender-affirming surgery, while also moving Manitas’ wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and children to safety in Switzerland. Years later, Rita and Emilia reconnect in London, and they return to Mexico to repair what can be fixed, bringing back Jessi and the children — before things end in an explosive and violent climax.

IndieWire spoke to make-up department head Julia Floch-Carbonel, special makeup effects artist Jean-Christophe Spadaccini, sound supervisor and re-recording mixer Cyril Holtz, editor Juliette Welfling, and cinematographer Paul Guilhaume about the ways in which their process evolved to tell the singular story at the center of “Emilia Pérez.”

The Makeup of ‘Emilia Pérez’

Emilia Pérez - Makeup - Craft Considerations

Much of the power of “Emilia Pérez” comes from the decision for star Karla Sofía Gascón to play both Emilia and Manitas. It’s a nearly unheard-of choice for a trans actress to play a pre-transition character, and Gascón’s vulnerability in doing so creates something very special for the film — and it was a huge responsibility for the makeup department to get it right.

“Karla Sofía Gascón is fierce, she’s sexy, she’s loud, she’s funny and she is there,” make-up department head Julia Floch-Carbonel told IndieWire. Special makeup effects artist Jean-Christophe Spadaccini agreed, adding, “Karla was really really enthusiastic. She took all this work with a lot of fun.”

To create an authentically menacing drug cartel leader, Floch-Carbonel and Spadaccini looked to the details. “I thought about Mickey Rourke in ‘The Wrestler,” Floch-Carbonel said. “The nose broken many times, the fake tan, the long hair. I wanted masculine, violent, but also coquetry.”

Spadaccini applied two cheek prosthetics with bad skin texture to create as jarring a juxtaposition to Emilia as possible. “Some people thought it was an actor [playing Manitas], Spadaccini said. “It was the best compliment I could have received.”

Emilia’s evolution might be the most remarkable, but Rita and Jessi also grow in ways that are subtly underscored by how they present themselves. Watch the video above to see how the make-up team helped capture the three leads’ growth through their changing looks.

The Sound of ‘Emilia Pérez’

Emilia Pérez - Sound Design - Craft Considerations

The sound mixing of any film can be a beast, but especially that of a musical. “Many of the musical numbers, we had production tracks, we had ADR takes and playbacks, and each song is a kind of puzzle of many sources,” sound supervisor and re-recording mixer Cyril Holtz told IndieWire. “The balance was found in editing.”

“Emilia Pérez” was particularly complicated because the score is so varied. There are spoken word songs, such as Rita’s interaction with a doctor in Tel Aviv, rock songs, and the powerful “El Mal,” in which Rita sings and dances throughout a gala dinner about the villains in the room, all dressed up to hide their evil deeds.

“‘El Mal,’ that one was quite hard because we had very strong rock music, and to get all those movements from Rita to preserve intelligibility to make Rita’s voice stand out? That was difficult,” Holtz said.

Though the film includes raucous song-and-dance numbers and quieter moments of emotion as the trio of women becomes increasingly comfortable with who they are, the film never seems to ping-pong from one extreme sound level to another; the quiet moments land just as powerfully as the angrier ones, and every song earns its place in the story.

“I think a mix is very good when at the end you think to yourself, yeah, nothing particular,” Holtz said. “We didn’t want to be spectacular. We really try to ensure that everything was natural and simple.”

Watch the video above for a deeper look at how Holtz wove together the multiple sounds of “Emilia Pérez.”

The Editing of ‘Emilia Pérez’

Emilia Pérez - Editing - Craft Considerations

“I’m always anxious when I start [any] movie because I always have the feeling, ‘Oh no, this one, I won’t be able to do it,'” editor Juliette Welfling told IndieWire. “It’s my first musical, and I found out it was not that hard.”

That may have been in part because of her longstanding collaboration with Audiard, one that has given both collaborators a mutual sense of faith and trust in one another. “Jacques, he doesn’t want to see a long first cut,” Welfling said. “He says, ‘I want to see something that will be close to the final duration…. We’ve known each other for so many years. We trust each other. I like to be by myself to get familiar, cut your scenes, mess up. I like it because then I will be more secure when he’ll arrive in the cutting room.”

For the most part, Welfling followed her instinct for the emotion of a scene — though one particular musical number did evolve over the course of post-production: “La Vaginoplastia,” in which Rita interviews a surgeon in Bangkok about what Emilia will need for her gender-affirming operations. “It’s a tricky scene, this one, because it was a bit too much. And at some point, it became too ironic. And too kitsch, maybe,” Welfling said. “It’s a comedy scene. She’s like in the supermarket of surgery. So this one was a bit difficult to balance.”

In the video above, see how Welfling approached the needs of that musical number, as well as others throughout the film.

The Cinematography of ‘Emilia Pérez’

Emilia Pérez - Cinematography - Craft Considerations

“Emilia Pérez” begins and ends in nights with a sense of danger — but what a glorious daytime the characters enjoy between. Nevertheless, the two nights that bookend the story had to feel related but distinctly separate.

“The first act of the movie is a night that’s pretty urban,” cinematographer Paul Guilhaume told IndieWire. “We actually made the choice to work as much as possible with practicals, the lights from the cars for example. That’s something that really guided us because this night, we wanted it to be pretty crisp and sharp and, as Jacques used to say, shiny.”

That first night feels ripe with possibility (including that of danger), but there’s a giddiness to it that is long gone by the end of the film and its final night. “The night from the last act of the film, it’s not the night of people who are alive,” Guilhaume said. “It’s the night of death that is marching towards the characters.”

Gone are the practicals that illuminated the opening scenes; instead, Audiard told Guilhaume that the “light should come from nowhere,” a direction that Guilhaume laughingly referred to as “terrible to hear in the moment.”

Watch the video above to hear how Guilhaume navigated that request, as well as the powerful moments of daylight that signify the release and joy of the “Emilia Pérez” characters.

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