Emilia Pérez: Audiard’s Singular Visual Style, with Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume

Jacques Audiard’s transgender Mexican cartel musical Emilia Pérez went through a uniquely adventurous development process.

Emilia Pérez stars Karla Sofía Gascón as a feared cartel leader who enlists a lawyer, played by Zoe Saldaña, to help her disappear and achieve her dream of transitioning into a woman. Selena Gomez co-stars as the cartel leader’s young wife who is left in the dark about her partner’s transition and is unwittingly brought along for the ride.

The acclaimed Netflix film, which was loosely inspired by a chapter in Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute, originally began as two distinct projects, both written by Audiard and titled Emilia Pérez: an opera libretto to be performed for the stage and a gritty crime movie the director envisioned shooting on location in Mexico.

“It took a lot of time for the two projects to merge into one,” says Paul Guilhaume, the French cinematographer who shot Emilia Pérez and is considered an Oscar frontrunner for his work.

“I didn’t even know myself which one I would be shooting — both, or was it one or the other?” Guilhaume recalls of the early days after he signed onto the project.

The cinematographer and his collaborators spent four months scouting locations in Mexico and imagining visual possibilities for the film — but at the end of that process, Audiard announced he would be pivoting.

“He wanted to do a film that talks about very serious things but to add element of lightness in the treatment and process of doing it,” Guilhaume recalls. “From there, it was, OK, let’s forget everything we have now and do the film in a studio. And let’s use all of the location scouting we have done as a starting point.”

Emilia Pérez‘s original visual language, one that melds Audiard’s signature “aesthetic of movement” with explosive, music video-style choreography, telenovela melodrama, consistently dramatic lighting choices, brooding political commentary and a gangland car chase through a simulated Mexican desert.

“It was strange because we didn’t have a unique reference,” Guilhaume explains. “Very often when you make a film, you say, ‘OK, it’s Sicario but [with this and that].’ That was not the case here. It was so different with the music and choreography — a genre of film that we couldn’t even say.”

Audiard is a filmmaker who declines to repeat himself, instead keeps experimenting and pushing in new directions. With Emilia Pérez, he has made a fresh, vital and affecting film

The movie has a slight rough-edged quality, with its loose camerawork, moody textures, and vibrant use of color.

Guilhaume had previously shot Audiard’s 2021 black-and-white drama Paris, 13th District, as well as music videos for Kanye West and Rosalía.

Emilia Pérez: Audiard’s Singular Visual Style, with Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume

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