Jacques Audiard’s audacious new film is probably more great achievement than great moviemaking, but definitely something you’ll want to see. Best known Stateside for UN PROPHETE/’09 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/un-prophete-prophet-2009.html), Audiard continues his interest in drug underworld stories with this wild take on a Mexican drug lord running a powerful cartel of vicious enforcers with an unusual request for rising young mob lawyer Zoe Saldana. Give up her current position and take him on exclusively. All he wants is to keep his power and assets while he ‘disappears,’ transitioning to female before seamlessly returning to wife, kids, assets and power as the ‘dead man’s‘ cousin. (Or is it sister? I got a little confused. His/her children eventually call her Auntie.) But wait! Audiard tells the whole tall tale as an ‘integrated’ Mexicali Musical, tunes ranging from Mariachi to Salsa. ¿Sounds mad, impossible, si¿ It’s enthralling. Beautifully detailed, staged and acted, even if half the numbers run together melodically. Best is a serious lament for all the victims, the ’disappeared,’ which ends with a sort of star-filled sky effect of the grieving faces. (Very Busby Berkeley!) Told with the structure & style of a ‘40 film musical, but in a world more like ‘50s TechniColored melodrama. It makes other pastiche cinemaniacs (like, say, Todd Haynes or Canada’s Guy Maddin) look like pikers. Karla Sofía Gascón is a revelation as Perez, but everyone is superbly cast. And should you get a case of the giggles at some inappropriate moment, don’t worry, happens regularly with ‘50s melodrama auteurs Sirk, Ray & Minnelli.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Stylistically, this is the EVITA/’96 of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s dreams.
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