Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez is an audacious, operatic fever dream that defies genres and expectations. Through liberating song and dance and bold visuals, we follow the journey of four remarkable women in Mexico, each pursuing their own happiness. In crafting this tale that centers on a cartel leader who fakes her own death in order to live authentically as her true self, Audiard recognized that the story’s structure resembled an opera libretto. This provided the inspiration to combine that musicality with the film’s visceral crime-thriller elements into a compelling mix that fluidly blends into a multi-dimensional, globe-spanning work of art.

Skipped a Beat: Emilia Pérez and Musicals on the Edge takes inspiration from Audiard’s fearless melding of styles to create a musical unlike any other. This weekly screening series highlights movie musicals from across cinema history that took a step away from the traditional musical format created by the Hollywood studios and dared to create something different.   
 

In this series, the expectation of big, bombastic show-stopping production numbers is upended by the understated, effervescent charm of Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort, while in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge and Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, bombast and artifice are exaggerated to extreme degrees. In Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark and Herbert Ross’ Pennies from Heaven, the cheery facade of musicals is peeled away to reveal the real-life tragedies their escapism tends to gloss over. Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine transforms the world of glam rock into an intense, glittery fantasy, while Francois Ozon’s 8 Women sees some of France’s most legendary actresses singing and dancing their way through a murder mystery straight out of Agatha Christie. 
 

Whether you’re a die-hard musical fan who longs to see the genre stretch in new directions, or the thought of characters breaking into song makes you squirm in your seat, the films in this series are sure to surprise and delight you with their wild inventiveness. Just as Vanity Fair noted that “there is no movie like Emilia Pérez”, you’ve never seen musicals quite like these.

Q&A with Jacques Audiard on December 3 at the 6 PM show of Emilia Pérez