Of the many twists and surprises in Jacques Audiard’s audacious musical “Emilia Pérez,” the most startling comes throughout the movie‘s end credits, when one realizes that breakout performer Karla Sofía Gascón stars as the eponymous Emilia both pre- and post-gender-affirming surgery. Of course she’s the gorgeous Emilia, however she additionally performs evil cartel chief Manitas.
That’s a daring transfer, and nobody concerned in the transformation of Gascón right into a male character took it flippantly.
“I was scared for Karla when we had to talk about this part of the film,” co-head of make-up Julia Floch Carbonel instructed IndieWire. “I was scared to put her back somewhere that she, of course, had been really unhappy. But what we created, she was really joyful about it. Very enthusiastic all the time.”
For Manitas, the terrifying cartel chief who hires a younger lawyer named Rita (Zoe Saldana) to behave as a go-between to schedule gender-affirming surgical procedure, Audiard needed a “chimera,” Floch Carbonel mentioned, “a really scary presence to contrast with Emilia after. Also because it’s not only about transition, it’s about the way that finally Emilia can express the love that she has. [As Manitas,] she’s stuck in the representation of male violence, so we wanted a big contrast because between scary and a really soft, modern after.”
“With Manitas, I did not care how horrible she looked, but with Emilia, I wanted her to be so perfect,” Gascón instructed IndieWire. “I wanted her to be on screen exactly the way I wanted to see her. So I drove them nuts with everything, with hair and makeup. But I think we did a great job.”
Aiding in Gascón’s transformation have been choose prosthetics from the head of make-up SFX Jean-Christophe Spadaccini, who started working with Audiard and Gascón a 12 months earlier than manufacturing started.
“We did very early tests,” Spadaccini mentioned. “And the first test, she looked like [co-star] Edgar Ramirez. But it really was a luxury to have so much time, doing a test a year before [then] doing more tests maybe six months later, and then finding this character, touch by touch.”
Finally, what they landed on was easy: three prosthetic items (nostril and cheeks) that took an hour every day to use. “Jean-Christophe’s team is incredible,” Gascón mentioned. “I really found that all the techniques they used were very impressive. For example, the first layer of makeup, after the silicone, he was using a toothbrush and kind of mixing the paint with alcohol and then splashing it on the skin and then very carefully applying it to get the perfect skin where you would even see flaws and the pores.”
From there, Floch Carbonel offered the look with delicate thrives.
“Karla is really feminine, she’s got a really feminine face,” Floch Carbonel mentioned. “She’s got feline eyes and she has a sexy, perfect mouth, sublime. We couldn’t go with another mouth. So I thought to myself that maybe a character like Mickey Rourke in ‘The Wrestler’ could be a good in-between, the little tattoos, the fake tan, the long hair, the grill, it could go with a mouth that we couldn’t hide.”
Manitas’ total look is highly effective sufficient that the majority audiences suppose a male actor performed the function, one thing Spadaccini takes satisfaction in. “A couple of times, I must say, I had a very nice compliment — people saying to me they thought it was an actor who played [Manitas],” Spadaccini mentioned. “So I was so happy to hear that.”
However although Emilia undergoes the most vital metamorphosis, Rita and Jessi (Selena Gomez) additionally develop and rework over the course of the movie. Jessi’s preliminary look as the spouse of a Mexican drug cartel chief was strongly Mexican earlier than her years alone in Switzerland together with her kids depart their mark.
“Jacques wanted to express that she was a very free woman,” head hair designer Romain Marietti instructed IndieWire. “And that was expressed through the hair evolution. [Audiard] wanted to really emphasize this change, this big transformation. Going to Switzerland changed her, she’s on her own, and so she lost Mexico and the dark hair and really girly makeup; she goes really, really light. She’s now more European and more free in her representation and even I would say sexiness.”
The blonde hair additionally needed to stand up to the rigors of Damien Jalet’s choreography, as Floch Carbonel identified. “You can’t interrupt. It’s so focused,” she mentioned of being unable to step in for touch-ups. “They are so focused. You can’t say, ‘Stop, I have to [adjust],’ you can’t.” So the staff took into consideration the bodily necessities of the characters (Floch Carbonel joked that, fortunately, “They are perfect, so they don’t sweat”) in addition to ensuring the viewers may hint their trajectories based mostly on how they current themselves.
For Saldana’s Rita, the change in her circumstances from ignored grunt worker in a regulation agency to stylish girl of the world wanted to be fastidiously communicated with out overselling it. “Zoe’s transformation is more about having power and money,” Floch Carbonel mentioned. “Because when she starts a film, she’s working for men, and she’s working a lot, but she’s not making money. Zoe, in real life, is someone really, really perfect. She’s sophisticated, she’s amazing. Even her body language is elegant, elegant, elegant, elegant. So we had to express [Rita’s difficulties]. We talked about prosthetics to make her gain some weight, but it’s not easy because the skin of Zoe is amazing and perfect, so everything shows.”
As an alternative, the staff gave Rita bushy eyebrows, zits, undereye shadows and even a whisper of a mustache to convey her place in the world. “And then she goes through London,” Floch Carbonel mentioned, “and she transitioned into a powerful lady.” That look finally softened in the musical’s remaining acts, when Rita and Emilia discovered La Lucecita to seek for the victims of cartel violence. “And then she goes back to something more casual, really elegant,” Floch Carbonel mentioned. “T-shirt-and-jeans simple — kind of a French lady, I would say.”
Typically, although, the wants of filmmaking took priority, as when Saldana takes heart stage for an unforgettable, rage-fueled inside monologue set to music at a fundraising gala. “We decided to tie the hair for her big dancing scene, because otherwise it was just not the same,” Marietti mentioned. “It was going to be a bit tricky for her. Many decisions were actually made on the ground, testing things out. So I had to be involved and make decisions as well on the spot.”
“Emilia Pérez” is now streaming on Netflix.
