Over the course of his 30-year career as film director, France’s Jacques Audiard has told stories anchored to diverse worlds such as prison (A Prophet), marine park (Rust & Bone) and banlieue housing project (Dheepan). But he has never conjured up a world where the visual look of the film was quite so pivotal as his latest feature – the awards-contending musical melodrama Emilia Pérez.
Given a storyline centring a Mexican cartel boss, Manitas (Karla Sofia Gascon), who transitions gender with the help of a lawyer, Rita (Zoe Saldana), then embracing her true self as the film’s title character, Audiard’s initial intention was to film on location in Mexico.
Key members of the team spent several weeks recce-ing in the country, but due to casting and scheduling issues, the film became a studio-based shoot at Bry-sur-Marne studios in the Paris suburbs. Audiard was keen that the film be a kaleidoscope of striking images that melded the reality of Mexico and the fantasy of his vision – a brief that he presented to artistic director and costume designer Virginie Montel and production designer Emmanuelle Duplay.
Montel has served as Audiard’s costume designer since 2001’s Read My Lips, earning César nominations for her work on A Prophet in 2010 and on Jean-Francois Richet’s two-part gangster drama Mesrine in 2009. As artistic director on Emilia Pérez, she was tasked to make sure the look of the whole film was coherent.
“It was very important to have Mexico as a basis even though we shot in studio,” she says. “We used a lot of strong colours including reds and pinks throughout the design as a tribute to Mexico as well as recurring motifs of flowers on several characters’ costumes. The visit to Mexico also helped us cast the extras so the background artists would look believable as either working-class or upper-class crowds.
“But Jacques wanted stylisation, he wanted to build the stylised world of the film, so in pre-production the search was about finding the limits of stylisation and how to use stylisation to represent a location with a single image, particularly for exterior shots. For example, for the two short scenes set in Switzerland, we used white backdrops with faded light and fake snow to suggest the location.”
Production designer Duplay – whose four César nominations include Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall last year – spent several weeks in prep working on ideas and mood boards to discuss with the other key artistic team members. “It was the most challenging film I’ve ever done and the biggest challenge was finding the right mix of reality and abstract,” she says. “And because so much of the film and the whole first act before Emilia’s transition takes place at nighttime, we all had to find ways to make the design shine in the dark.”
Epic scale
Using all six stages at Bry-sur-Marne over almost six months from start to wrap, Duplay had all the sets constructed. The big opening musical number takes places in a street and features Saldana as Rita and a huge crowd of singing and dancing extras.
“I designed it based on photos of markets Virginie took during her trip to Mexico and we built all the market stalls and dressed them with brightly coloured props that we brought over from Mexico as well as lots of spotlights to shine through the night,” says Duplay. “Choreographer Damien Jalet took over the set for a month before filming so he could work with the dancers to make it work for them.”
One of the key sets early on is Manitas’ van. “Manitas was originally going to be living in a classical Mexican hacienda but we couldn’t recreate that in a studio, and Jacques came up with the idea of him being always in a van or a car, always moving, never stable. We dressed the set with screens and monitors to bring some pops of white as well as cables and lights hanging from the ceiling so they would move a lot to suggest motion.”
The Bangkok hospital where Rita goes on a research trip – and where a Busby Berkeley-style musical number unfolds with multiple gurneys, wheelchairs and hospital beds revolving around a large circular room – was based on a real clinic in Mexico. “We designed it to be white with a lot of spotlights and screens so it hits you in the face after all the dark,” says Duplay.
Duplay was able to bring in more elements of Mexico in the designs of the houses inhabited by Emilia and her eventual girlfriend Epifania (Arriana Paz). “In the second act, there are a lot of bright Mexican colours,” she explains. “Emilia is very rich but has taste, there’s nothing kitsch or vulgar about her, and her house is inspired by the architecture of Mexican architect Luis Barragán. Epifania’s house, with its colourful, homey interiors, is based on a real house we visited in one of the poorer suburbs where you can see the cable cars sailing over Mexico City.”
The striking banqueting room where a fundraising gala takes place, and Rita sings a scathing song about the assembled wealthy guests, was designed to foreground Rita in her element. “The scene was always going to be set in a completely black and empty room without walls but just the tables and extras who were lit to make them look sinister to reflect their real selves. Jacques wanted to show the vulgarity of the rich people there.”
For Montel designing the costumes, the theme was transformation for all the main characters. “For Manitas, we had to first find out who he was,” she says. “Jacques’ main concern was making the film very contemporary. Originally Manitas was going to be a rancher, a cowboy, as was his crew. Then Jacques decided they would all be always outside, in wasteland, on the road, and they became gangster rappers on the road. The rapper Post Malone was a big reference for Manitas. Emilia was always going to be elegant and simple and feminine.”
Rita transforms from invisible wallflower – always in a grey, buttoned-up uniform which Montel padded out to give Saldaña more curves – to the sophisticated successful lawyer she has become when we meet her in the second act. Here Montel put her in luxury fabrics including silk, cashmere and shiny satin which show off much more of her body. For the gala, she wears a striking red velvet suit which was one of several costumes made by fashion house Yves Saint Laurent which co-produced the film. In the final act, Rita wears simple T-shirts and jeans. “She’s found herself and can be herself, she doesn’t care about money, she cares about people,” says Montel.
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