Prestige isn’t everything when it comes to being the best streaming service on the market, but grabbing films that actually review well doesn’t have many downsides.
Although many of Netflix’s recent successes when it comes to original movies have had incredibly unimpressive reviews from critics and audiences alike, it’s looking to buck that trend with Emilia Pérez, which hits the streaming service on 13 November, as confirmed by a new teaser.
The film stars Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia, a mob boss who wants out of their criminal life, and Zoe Saldaña plays a lawyer who gets the offer of a lifetime when she’s approached to make that happen. Selena Gomez is Emilia’s wife, and will have her own part to play in the drama.
If that sounds like a traditional criminal thriller, then you might want to check out the teaser trailer that we’ve embedded above – it’ll clue you into what makes Emilia Pérez different. For one thing, it’s basically a musical, although probably a more impressionistic one than you might expect.
Karla Sofía Gascón told Netflix in an interview: “You have a musical that is not a musical, an action movie that’s not an action movie, a drama that’s not a drama, a comedy that’s not a comedy”. That sums up the apparently dreamlike atmosphere of the movie.
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If you’re worried it might be a dud, you can also check out the reception the movie got at the Cannes Film Festival for reassurance. It came away with the Grand Jury Prize as well as the Best Actress award for Gascón, making it a critical darling already.
That festival run also means that it already has a bunch of reviews to point to – checking out Rotten Tomatoesand you’ll find it on an impressive score of 88% at the time of writing. As always, it’ll be fascinating to see whether audiences take to it in the same way, with previous movies like Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma showing that Netflix can indeed be a good home for ambitious arthouse flicks.
Emilia Pérez will hit cinemas before it arrives on Netflix for everyone, though. A short run will start sometime in October, according to the streamer, ahead of that 13 November arrival on the platform.
