Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series, highlighting the screenplays behind the year’s most talked-about films, continues with the winner of the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize Emilia Perez. The Spanish-language Netflix musical drama, written and directed by France’s Jacques Audiard, also won the Cannes Best Actress award for its stars Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz, a first for an ensemble cast at the festival.

The film became France’s entry in the international feature Oscar race and played qualifying in theaters before being released on Netflix on November 13th.

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Set against the backdrop of original songs, dances and experimental images, the film follows four women in Mexico, each seeking their own happiness. Cartel leader Emilia (Gascón) hires Rita (Saldaña), an underappreciated lawyer, to help her fake her death so she can finally live authentically as herself.

Under the pretext of protecting her family, Emilia sends her wife Jessi (Gomez) and their children to Switzerland. Later, Jessie returns to Mexico with an invitation from her late partner’s cousin to live with her, unaware of what secret Emilia is hiding. However, when Jessi meets Gustavo Brun (Edgar Ramírez), Emilia’s carefully built new life falls apart. A spiral of anger and obsession threatens to bring her past to light and force her to confront the person she once was.

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Audiard found inspiration for the script six years ago while reading Boris Razon’s novel Ecoute. “A Mexican transgender drug dealer shows up in the middle of the book and wants to have surgery,” he said. “Since the drug dealer was not developed further in the following chapters, I decided to start my story with this character.”

After writing the treatment for the film, Audiard casually realized that the film was more like an opera libretto than a screenplay because there were few sets and the characters were archetypal.

“I don’t like defining a film by its genre. I think most of my work revolves around that principle,” he said. “When the film was finished, we tried to define it as a musical melodrama because I didn’t want the film to be defined as just a musical or a thriller. For me it is also a film inspired by telenovelas with ironic-comic moments. I guess you could say it’s also a musical crime drama.”

The film’s tragic story is underlined by the mesmerizing original musical numbers composed by Camille and Clément Ducol. The cast’s performances transport audiences into a world of song and dance that brings this groundbreaking Spanish-language fever dream to life.

Check out the scripts below, in both Spanish and English.

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