Strange, I’ve seen that face before: Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofía Gascón in ‘Emilia Pérez’.

EMILIA PEREZ ***1/2 (132 minutes) MA
It is exceedingly rare for your humble reviewer to come to a much-talked-about movie so deep into its theatrical release.

A public transport fail prevented attendance at the official media preview; time stress kept it off the must-see schedule until just last week at the tail end of the film’s cinema run.

(Fortunately the film lands Tuesday on Apple+, so you may kindly regard this write-up as an early streaming review rather than as the pathetically tardy film review it actually is.)

With only one other patron in a large, luxurious cinema the wait for the film to begin admittedly came with some trepidation.

The film had proved enormously divisive, chiefly because its titular character is transgender and is played by Karla Sofía Gascón, a transgender person.

Nobody needs to be told that anything transgender is a hot potato as people argue, pontificate and issue decrees regarding identity politics, pronoun usage, self ID protocols whether anyone can truly change their sex and, of course, whether sex and gender are interchangeable terms or are distinct concepts.

Heated discussion over the film redoubled when the film received a staggering 13 Oscar nominations.

The film started getting it from all sides.

Online pundits declared Emilia Pérez the worst ever Best Film nominee, attacked Karla Sofía Gascón being included in the Best Actress category and broadly deemed the film to just be plain-old bad, another serving of fetid woke cinema.

The film didn’t even earn any elephant stamps for transgender representation, the claims being it merely played on stereotypes and did nothing positive for the trans community.

So, is Emilia Pérez that terrible? Is it the thoroughly awful 132-minute torture session that egregiously presses a host of hot-button themes designed to drive people nuts, enraging conservative commentators and sending trans activists to their keyboards?

Well, no.

Setting aside the kerfuffle and watching the film with an open mind Emilia Pérez unfolds as a very fine, skillfully directed musical drama that certainly doesn’t square with the excoriating condemnation it has received, especially in fulminating critiques on YouTube.

If anything, it appears Emilia Pérez has been widely – and deliberately – misunderstood, misinterpreted and misread for the sake of pushing a variety of agendas the film simply does not speak to.

Very briefly, the story involves Mexican lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) who is approached by murderous cartel leader Manitas Del Monte (Gascón) seeking her assistance in helping him turn into a she.

Once the transition is accomplished, with Manitas now Emilia Pérez, years elapse before the two meet again during a dinner as Pérez seeks Rita’s aid in reconnecting with the wife (Selena Gomez) and kids.

There is some measure of criminal endeavour, but the man trunk of the narrative sees Pérez become an advocate for the disappeared.

As the closing credits began to roll, the very first thing that sprung to mind was the line uttered by Holly (Sissy Spacek) in Badlands after she loses her virginity to Kit (Martin Sheen): “Gosh, what was everybody talkin’ about?”

The film hangs together extraordinarily well, the direction by Jacques Audiard is slick, the musical numbers are deeply impressive and the performances are strong, with Saldaña deserving all the accolades she has received thus far. She’ll take the Oscar, too.

Most surprising, the film is not driven by transgender ideology or identity politics; it’s driven by Catholic values.

The story positively brims with themes and thoughts about redemption, acceptance, forgiveness, social justice, guilt and the power of family unity. Emilia Pérez easily rivals Conclave for its Catholic content.

Furthermore, the film hardly qualifies as the cinematic slab of transgender propaganda it’s been accused of pushing.

If anything, one reading of the film tests many presumptions about “transitioning”.

Though the main character supposedly switches sex via surgery, etc from male to female, Emilia not only looks, walks and talks like a man but, crucially, still acts like the man from the first reel.

Despite the supposed change, the character ultimately reverts back to the toxic, violent, repulsive brand of masculine behaviours that made Manitas so notorious in the first place.

Revisiting some of the scorching reviews after the film, it was hard not to sense the bias and political agendas that had inspired the venomous rants, prompting one to recall the age-old quip about whether they’d seen the same film.

The proclivity to contort and distort the film’s substance to suit an editorial line is laid bare by the way one musical number La Vaginoplastia – the one with the meme-generating “penis to vagina” line – has been clipped by haters and used to make the film look like an infomercial for transgender surgery. Which it ain’t.

Above and besides all, Emilia Pérez is damned entertaining, with great camerawork, choreography and Bob Fosse-standard editing.

So, it’s a clear case of never mind the naysayers, who clearly sought to be morally offended by a film that, at its core, is actually more moral than most.

Emilia Pérez streams from 4 March on Apple+