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Remember when I said that being nominated 4 times for a single movie was pretty impressive? Well Jacques Audiard is nominated 5 times for this single movie, where he seems to have done everything except craft services. Guess what else? The film is nominated for Adapted Screenplay, because Audiard had already produced an opera libretto which was based on a book.
The story follows Rita, a discontented defense attorney who is engaged by a cartel kingpin to give him the cover he needs to transition to being a woman, including helping him fake his own death and relocating his wife and children to Switzerland. Once she has transitioned, she begins to live a new life as a philanthropist and do-gooder (with a hint of corruption on the side), and she decides that she misses her family terribly and asks Rita to bring them back to Mexico to live with her. Her ex-wife rekindles an affair she was having while still married, and adds another layer of complication to this already complicated life. The film reflects on criminality, corruption, family, and the question of whether life truly changes when the core personality does not.
Before I saw the film, I had no idea it was a musical. Selena Gomez turns out to be a non-fluent Spanish speaker who pulls off acting and emoting while speaking the language. Zoe Saldana turns out to be a trained dancer who can also really sing. And those were just the smallest of surprises. Everything about this film is not what you expect it to be, in all of the best ways. I loved it, the music and the songs are excellent and beautifully choreographed. The cinematography was exceptional. I imagine that Selena Gomez was a breath away from a Supporting Actress nomination (which would have tied EP with the three other films in history to garner 14 nominations, the record.) The whole of this film is even greater than the sum of its parts, and its parts are pretty magnificent.
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