Emilia Pérez

It's a Spanish-language film about a Mexican attorney who helps a drug cartel kingpin transition into a woman -- and it's a musical. What's not to love? Very little for this rapturous picture.

I’ll admit the premise of “Emilia Pérez” sounds like a “South Park” tongue-in-cheek episode: a downtrodden Mexican attorney is enlisted to help a drug cartel kingpin who… wants to transition into a woman. Starring Zoe Saldana, a trans actress and a bunch of other actors you probably haven’t heard of. Oh, and it’s a musical.

What’s not to love?

Very little, as it turns out. “Emilia Pérez” is a rapturous cinematic experience, emotionally true, both entertaining and thought-provoking. And it features a lot of killer songs and dance numbers.

I’ll admit my eyes roamed toward my forehead when I saw the previews for this Netflix-produced picture, directed by Jacques Audiard (“Rust and Bone”), for which he also wrote the screenplay based on his own opera, which in turn was adapted from Boris Razon’s novel, “Écoute.” It seemed kind of out there and silly, almost like a parody of a woke Hollywood approach to LGBTQ stories.

Instead, I was fully swept up by these characters and their journey. Saldana is terrific as Rita Mora Castro, a Black Mexican attorney who feels a prisoner of her country’s corrupt power structure fueled by billions in drug money. The movie opens with her crafting the closing speech to get a villain who murdered his wife off the hook, and when it works she doesn’t even get to claim credit for it.

But the real star of the show is Karla Sofía Gascón, a trans Spanish actress who plays the feared drug lord, Manitas Del Monte. When Rita first meets him he’s a fearsome bear of a man, gold teeth splitting an omnipresent sneer beneath a death’s-head stare and facial tattoos. He speaks in a gravely monotone like the voice of the devil spitting up out of a grave.

He surprises her with this demand for her services: that she arrange for him to have head-to-toe surgery to transition into a woman, and also his disappearance from the world. This goes so far as to convince his wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their two young sons that he has died. They’re to be set up in Switzerland with plenty of money from his narco-fortune.

Rita complies, out of a sense of fear for her own life — the last lawyer did not get the job done, and it’s made clear to her what will happen if she does not come through — greed for the millions he will pay her, as well as a chance to thumb her nose at her complicit law firm and justice system. All this comes to pass.

But then the big surprise: a few years later, Rita runs into a mysterious woman at a party in London. She is large in body and spirit, and Rita soon puzzles out that this figure, Emilia Pérez, is in fact Manitas in her new form. At first fearing she has come to cut the last loose thread tying her to her old life, Rita soon relents and even befriends Emilia.

She also helps her return to Mexico, even reinserting herself into the lives of her family, pretending to be a cousin of Manitas who was tasked with taking care of them. Things seem to go quite well, Emilia is very happy, and even the dour Rita finds some absolution for her deeds.

But returning to her old haunts brings new threats. Feeling guilt over having taken part in so much killing, Emilia launches a nonprofit, La Lucecita, to help find the bodies of all those who have gone missing and return their remains to the families. She enlists Rita in this effort, and in a few months they’ve become national celebrities for their good works.

Emilia also finds another chance at love with Epifania (Adriana Paz), one of the clients whose husband went missing. Though it doesn’t carry a lot of screen time, it’s a tender and cherished coupling.

Jessi, meanwhile, returns to the arms of her former lover, Gustavo (Édgar Ramírez), a dalliance she obligingly confesses to Emilia. The darkness that passes over her eyes is a reminder that, despite her complete transformation, the person who killed thousands is still behind that gaze.

The musical sequences are not voluminous, but fit snugly into the story, carrying it forward without just bursting into song for its own sake. Clément Ducol wrote the musical score, with original songs by Camille. Damien Jalet choreographed the dance sequences, filled with sharp energy and almost violent kinetic bursts.

In her first number, lamenting her role as a lackey lawyer, Saldana delivers brisk stocatto lines, and for a moment I feared she would remain stuck in the hallowed talk-singing tradition of movie stars who can’t carry a tune. (See Harrison, Rex.) But she gets other opportunties for more melodic efforts, and proves quite adept.

Gascón gets the more ballad-y and emotional songs, and has a lovely, plaintive quality to her voice — especially when contrasted with Manitas’ growl. The songs where she sings about her painful, but to her life-saving, surgeries and her surprise at falling into romance again are effective tear-jerkers.

Despite being mostly in Spanish, with a few smatterings of English here and there, I had no trouble connecting emotionally with the characters and their intersecting journeys.

“Emilia Pérez” is at its center a story of rebirth — obviously for the title character, but also in differing ways for Rita and Jessi. They get a chance to live lives they might otherwise never have because of Emilia’s big change.

The question becomes whether you can every truly leave your old self behind, and if redemption is possible for a mountain of crimes. It’s a tragic, and achingly beautiful, parable.