“A Genre of Film That We Couldn’t Even Say”: THR Presents Q&A With ‘Emilia Pérez’ Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume
How does such a genre-defying film like Jacques Audiard’s transgender Mexican cartel musical Emilia Pérez come into being? In this case, it went through a uniquely adventurous development process.
The acclaimed Netflix film, which was loosely inspired by a chapter in Boris Razon’s 2018 novel écoute, originally began as two distinct projects, both written by Audiard and titled Emilia Pérez: an opera libretto to be performed for the stage and a gritty crime movie the director envisioned shooting on location in Mexico.
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“It took a lot of time for the two projects to merge into one, to make Emilia Pérez,” says Paul Guilhaume, the French cinematographer who shot Emilia Pérez and is considered an Oscar frontrunner for his work on the film. “I didn’t even know myself which one I would be shooting — both, or was it one or the other?” Guilhaume recalls of the early days after he signed onto the project.
The cinematographer and a team of collaborators spent four months scouting locations in Mexico and imagining visual possibilities for the film — but at the end of that process, Audiard announced he would be pivoting.
“He wanted to do a film that talks about very serious things but to add an element of lightness in the treatment and process of doing it,” Guilhaume recalls. “From there, it was, OK, let’s forget everything we have now and do the film in a studio. And let’s use all of the location scoutings we have done as a starting point.”
The Hollywood Reporter recently sat down with Guilhaume for an edition of THR Presents, to discuss the creation of Emilia Pérez‘s wholly original visual language, one that melds Audiard’s signature “aesthetic of movement” with explosive, music video-style choreography, telenovela melodrama, consistently dramatic lighting choices, brooding political commentary and a gangland car chase through a simulated Mexican desert.
“It was strange because we didn’t have a unique reference,” Guilhaume explains. “Very often when you make a film, you say, ‘OK, it’s Sicario but [with this and that].’ That was not the case here. It was so different with the music and choreography — a genre of film that we couldn’t even say.”
As THR‘s chief critic David Rooney put it in his review from the Cannes Film Festival in May, where Emilia Pérez debuted to acclaim: “Some Francophile cinema fans keep hoping that Audiard will make another searing drama like A Prophet or Rust and Bone, but any filmmaker who declines to repeat himself and instead keeps experimenting and pushing in new directions should be applauded. With Emilia Pérez, he has made something fresh, full of vitality and affecting, held aloft by its own quietly soaring power.
Rooney adds: “The movie looks terrific — never too slick, with a slight rough-edged quality that adds to its appeal. The camerawork is loose and supple, the moody textures of the many night scenes are effective and the use of vibrant color is invigorating.”
Emilia Pérez stars Karla Sofía Gascón as a feared cartel leader who enlists a lawyer, played by Zoe Salda?a, to help her disappear and achieve her dream of transitioning into a woman. Selena Gomez co-stars as the cartel leader’s young wife who is left in the dark about her partner’s transition and is unwittingly brought along for the ride.
Guilhaume previously shot Audiard’s 2021 black-and-white drama Paris, 13th District, as well as music videos for Kanye West and Rosalía. Watch the THR Presents episode above for his scene-by-scene breakdown of how Emilia Pérez was made — along with the title of the movie he rewatches every time he begins a new project, to remind himself of “visual perfection.”
This edition of THR Presents is sponsored by Netflix.
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