Idiotic cultural appropriation is paid back to Netflix, the distributor of Emilia Pérez. Netflix sent the French Emily in Paris, the French sent back this film — the titles are practically the same. A Mexico-set musical about a transgender narco (Karla Sofía Gascón) who starts an NGO to help the families of people murdered by the cartels, the film actually stars Zoe Saldaña as Emilia’s lawyer and the facilitator of her gender-affirming surgeries. It is a thankless role, predicated on Saldaña taking seriously the idea that Gascón is, as a review in the Los Angeles Times had it, giving a “sensually charged portrayal [that] wouldn’t be out of place anchoring a classic Hollywood woman’s noir.” Sure, Tommy Wiseau could play Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, too, if you gave him the chance.

The idea that this galoot would be unrecognizable to even her children requires a special suspension of disbelief. Therefore the director, Jacques Audiard, had to include a song about it called “Papa,” in which the kid has an inkling that is soothingly dispelled by Emilia herself. If the film had anything of a fairy-tale element to it, which it does not, a scene like that might have worked. But everything in Emilia Pérez is too easy, a neoliberal cakewalk. It’s the kind of movie in which Emilia makes sure to assure us her NGO is “not a replacement for public services.” The film is a preposterous nightmare of first-world self-regard.