An incredible roller coaster of a film, I can easily imagine Bill Hader’s Stefon character from Saturday Night Live describing Emilia Pérez: “It’s got drug kingpins, drag queens, courtroom drama, characters returning from the dead, a Bonnie and Clyde–level kidnapping, but it’s also a family drama, a story of female empowerment, an exploration of family dynamics, of violence and redemption. Oh, and did I also mention it’s mostly in Spanish and it’s also a musical adjacent piece of spoken-word poetry with some strong operatic vibes!”

I kid you not.

In other words, Emilia Pérez is fabulously unlike any film you’ve ever seen. It’s a LOT. And it’s definitely not for everybody. But for me, it’s one of the most compelling, refreshing, and original pieces of cinema I’ve seen.

At a Santa Barbara International Film Festival Cinema Society screening on October 26, French Writer/Director Jacques Audiard — yes, he’s French and the film is in Spanish because, as he explained, the story demanded it — the original idea for the film came from a book called Écoute [Listen], with a character who is a drug kingpin who wants to transition to become a woman. But the development of the character into one of three key women in the film — played by Karla Sofía Gascón (Manitas Del Monte and Emilia Pérez), Zoe Saldaña (Rita Mora Castro, Manitas’s lawyer), and Selena Gomez (Jessi Del Monte, Manitas’s wife) — ultimately evolved into the creation of a telenovela-style fantasy version of Mexico with an over-the-top dose of operatic drama to contrast with the intimate emotions the three main characters experience. The stars collectively (with co-star Adriana Paz, who has a pivotal but much smaller role) and deservedly won Best Actress at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

The deceptively campy style of the plot doesn’t diminish the seriousness of what these women go through, but the film definitely walks a tightrope in terms of tone, which is what makes their performances so impressive.

Without giving too much of this delicious and outrageous fever dream away, let me say that through song, dance and bold visuals, Emilia Pérez tells the story of some remarkable women trying to pursue happiness in their own ways, in some pretty wild circumstances. And Emilia Pérez is absolutely one of the most original pieces of film you’ll see this year. Don’t miss it.

Zoe Saldaña, who will be honored at SBIFF with the American Riviera Award on February 7, gives a particularly fabulous performance as the most grounded character in the film. I’m looking forward to hearing what she has to say about working on this groundbreaking film, currently playing at the Riviera Theatre and coming to Netflix on November 13. View the trailer here and see the SBIFF interview with writer/director Jacques Audiard and composers Camille and Clément Ducol here.

Film

Anora
Director: Sean Baker
FilmNation Entertainment and Cre Film
In Theaters: 11.02

There are times that I feel the need to be quite clear that when I give a good review to a film:  it’s not necessarily a blanket recommendation for all audiences. If you’re squeamish about strong sexual content in a movie and want any movie that includes it to spoon feed you a redemptive, cautionary message, Anora isn’t going to be your thing. That said, I found it to be it’s one of the most interesting and refreshing films of 2024. 

Anora ‘Ani’ Mikheeva (Mikey Madison, Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood, Scream), a 23-year-old exotic dancer in New York City, finds her regular routine suddenly sidetracked when her boss, knowing that Ani learned to speak from her grandmother, sends her to give a lap dance to Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eidelstein), the spoiled young son of a prominent oligarch, Vanya becomes smitten with her, their connection quickly escalates and Ani agrees to visit him at home as an escort. Before long, Vanta is offering Anora the sum of  $15000 to be his live-in girlfriend for a week. At the end of this week of partying and lovemaking, a spontaneous marriage proposal in Las Vegas leads Anora to the altar to become Mrs. Zakharov. The honeymoon doesn’t last long, however, as Vanya’s disapproving parents send henchmen left by Toros (Karren Karagulian, Tangerine, Red Rocket,) the young man’s Armenian godfather, who can perhaps best be described as an “off-duty” Orthodox Priest, to break things up. When Vanya learns that his parents are angry and headed to New York, he runs away, and Ani must make a tentative truce with Toros and his gang as they work together, scouring the Russian and Ukrainian neighborhoods of Little Odessa to find him.

Writer-director Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is a masterpiece that is still burned into my mind. The unconventional auteur’s penchant for telling judgment-free stories about people from different walks of life—even those who make what many would consider questionable choices—is put to a different but no less effective use in Anora. While the film is far from a glamorization of sex work—this isn’t a Pretty Woman-style romcom and it doesn’t cut away before things get explicit;the bright and tenacious protagonist is never portrayed as pathetic or deserving of anything that happens to her because of her chosen profession, nor does it bother to offer stock justifications about how she was forced into this life out of desperation. Ani is simply portrayed as a person making a living by doing something that she’s good at, sometimes enjoying her work and gritting her teeth through it at others. There’s a lot about this film that’s left to the eye of the beholder, right down to the fact that strictly speaking, there’s nothing about this story that should be humourous, yet most of Anora is a fast and furious comedy that borders on screwball farce. Baker is not one to keep things too simple, however, and Anora also deals with such dark themes such as the commoditization of women, violence and the ability of those with an unlimited bank account and a very limited conscience to set their own rules. There’s an underlying harsh sadness to the film that at times rises right up to the surface, in particular in the brilliant and haunting final scene.

Anora is aptly titled, as throughout, the title character is the driving force, and Madison is a revelation in the role. Deftly moving from sassy to vulnerable, from sexy siren to hilariously brash New York spitfire, the young actress is magnetic and flawlessly handles the mix of laughter and tears that she’s going to be be giving older and more seasoned stars like Angelina Jolie a serious run for their money come Oscar time. While the whole ensemble is magnificent, the unsung standout who makes as strong an impression as Madison is Yuri Borisov (The Silver Skates, Petrov’s Flu) as Igor, the muscle of the henchman, who forms what begins as a grudging respect for Ani’s ferocity and becomes something else. The fact that the dynamic between them becomes one of the most unexpectedly touching character relationships of the year is certainly in part a testament to Baker’s skill, yet anything less than perfection from the actors would have made it fall flat. 

It’s tempting to compare Anora either to a Coen Brothers botched caper comedy, or the older works of Woody Allen, in terms of the raw filmmaking style, the New York setting and the deceptive simplicity of the story. It’s an imperfect comparison to say the least, and not only would it it be a disservice to imply that Baker is trying to imitate anyone else, Anora is more grounded than the Coens’ work and a lot less forced than Allen’s. While I have to emphasize again that this is not a movie for everyone, it’s a great movie, and may well be remembered as the breakout movie that launched the career of one of the great actresses of our time. –Patrick Gibbs

Read more film reviews here: 
Film Review: Heretic
Film Review: Here 

The last time audiences saw superpowered alien symbiote Venom (Tom Hardy) and his human “host” Eddie Brock (also Hardy) on the big screen, it wasn’t in a “Venom” movie, it was in a mid-credits sequence in 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” The scene saw the pair briefly hop universes into the Disney-controlled Marvel Cinematic Universe, but then quickly get sucked back into the Sony-controlled Marvel universe – the one that has “Spider-Man” characters, but no Spider-Man (and is not to be confused with the animated Spider-verse). The scene is shown again at the beginning of “Venom: The Last Dance,” but it has no bearing on the story. Fans of the character should know not to expect MCU quality from this movie. This is the “Morbius”/”Madame Web” arm of the franchise.

The new film sees Eddie and Venom as fugitives in Mexico following some frowned-upon crimefighting in 2021’s “Let There Be Carnage.” They try to flee to New York, where they should be safe from human authorities, but they fail to factor in threats from non-humans. Venom’s recent activity inadvertently activated a device called a Codex, which exists as long as a symbiote and its human host are both alive. Supervillain Knull (Andy Serkis), imprisoned on a faraway planet, can use his minions called Xenophages to steal the Codex, break free and conquer the universe. I think the way it works is that if the Xenophages can swallow Venom alive, that counts as stealing the Codex for Knull. And simple evasion isn’t an option for Venom because the Xenophages are sure to cause a lot of collateral damage to Earth, and he’s the only one that can stop them. He and Eddie are going to have to fight.

If you thought I was spouting too much exposition just now, wait until you see the subplot about the secret Area 51 facility where symbiotes are studied by scientists like Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple). The character comes complete with a backstory about feeling guilt over the death of her brother, who wanted to be a scientist. I get the impression that she only devotes herself to science out of guilt and not passion. If the character is supposed to be passionate about her work, it’s not coming through in Temple’s performance. She has several conversations with the facility’s enforcer Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), one of those grunts that wants to kill any being he doesn’t understand, where all they do is explain the facility’s purpose to one another. Almost all of their dialogue could be preceded with the dreaded words “as you know…” because there’s no way these characters wouldn’t know all of this information already, but the audience has to be filled in.

Literally thrown off their flight, Eddie and Venom hitch a ride with the hippie Moon family, led by Martin (Rhys Ifans), on their way to Area 51 to try to see aliens. I guess the family’s scenes are supposed to be comic relief, but they aren’t funny. What is funny is a brief stop in Las Vegas where Eddie and Venom share a dance with franchise mainstay Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu). Could the scene be cut without doing a disservice to the story? Yes. Should the scene stay in because it’s a welcome distraction from the story? Also yes.

That scene aside, “Venom: The Last Dance” is a slog. The script is a mess, the new characters unlikeable, the action murky and hard to follow, and the mindless Xenophages are terrible antagonists, with Knull not exactly helping by sitting on the sidelines the whole time. I’d say that Hardy comes off relatively unscathed because he has pretty good chemistry with… himself (I can’t decide if that makes the repartee easier or harder), but then I found out he has a story credit on this slop, so I can’t let him off the hook. I hope this really is the “Last Dance” for these “Spider-Man”-adjacent movies outside the MCU and Spider-verse.

Grade: D

“Venom: The Last Dance” is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images and strong language. Its running time is 110 minutes.

Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.