There appears to be only one person in the musical Emilia Pérez who knows the kind of inconsistent movie they’re making.
That would not be Zoe Saldaña, here playing Rita Moro Castro: a disaffected defence lawyer who starts off criticizing Mexico’s corrupt justice system and ends up jamming a man’s face into the crotch of her red velvet pantsuit.
It would not be Selena Gomez’s Jessi — the platinum-haired moll of a notorious drug lord, who ping-pongs between domestic distress and singing to her cellphone camera in a never explained or explored subplot about social media obsession.
And it is not the various bit parts scattered throughout. At times they tack serious, delivering heart-rending laments on the piles of unidentified human remains littering the Mexican landscape, innocent victims of the country’s unending drug wars. At others, they dance through operating rooms wit