Emilia Pérez vs Touch of Evil: Evil Emilia

2025-02-26

We’re heading to Tijuana this episode, as we watch two films set in Mexico made nearly seventy years apart. Emilia Pérez, the new Netflix transgender narco-gangster musical, has thirteen Oscar nominations and a whole lot of bad press. But does it deserve the controversy and the opprobrium, or were audiences just expecting something different? We’re comparing it to 1958’s Touch of Evil, Orson Welles’ last great noir picture which was also maligned on release but is now consider...

We’re heading to Tijuana this episode, as we watch two films set in Mexico made nearly seventy years apart. Emilia Pérez, the new Netflix transgender narco-gangster musical, has thirteen Oscar nominations and a whole lot of bad press. But does it deserve the controversy and the opprobrium, or were audiences just expecting something different? We’re comparing it to 1958’s Touch of Evil, Orson Welles’ last great noir picture which was also maligned on release but is now considered a classic, especially in its 1998 restored cut.

Two takes on racism, prejudice, drug gangs and cross border travel. But which film features a star who looks like they’ve been dipped in chicken fat? Which film is studded with little lights from start to finish? Which film has the longest uninterrupted take? Which lead actor is surprisingly flexible? Which film offers two Gabors for the price of one? And which film contains everything that conservative commentators hate?

Plus a lot of ceilings and mirrors and deep focus, an appearance from Madonna with a hand drier, an Australian stop frame Tim Burton-a-like, a refugee story from Senegal, a new way to decorate your car, a 1950s equivalent of pounding techno, and a really, really weak radio.

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