In a story about transformation, the engineers of change can be many. Take “Emilia Pérez,” the award-winning musical film about a Mexican drug lord, Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, who hires a lawyer to help facilitate not just a disappearance but also gender-affirming surgery that will transform the brutish cartel leader into an elegant socialite, Emilia Pérez.
The transformation from Manitas to Emilia is the dramatic center of the film and the product of a collaboration that included Boris Razon, writer of the 2018 novel “Écoute,” on which the film is loosely based; screenwriter and director Jacques Audiard; actress Karla Sofía Gascón; and the below-the-line talent responsible for the look of both Manitas and Emilia, particularly costume designer Virginie Montel and makeup department head Julia Floch-Carbonel.
“They allowed me to go deeper into the character and make it feel real,” Gascón said of Montel and Floch-Carbonel.