Emilia Perez

Today on Art of the Cut we speak with Oscar nominee, Juliette Welfling about Jacques Audiard’s film, Emilia Perez, currently on Netflix.

Juliette’s been on Art of the Cut before another of Audiard’s films, The Sisters Brothers. Her other films include The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, for which she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Editing. She also edited the films: Rust and Bone, A Prophet, The Past, Free State of Jones and Ocean’s Eight.

Juliet. It’s so nice to have you on the show again.

Thank you for having me. 

This is the same director as the last time we spoke about The Sisters Brothers?

Yes. I’ve edited all his movies. This one is the 10th. The first one was, I think in 1993. 

Gary Ross is somebody else that you’ve worked with for many films. When you are working with either of them is it different for you when you have to work with a new director? How do you establish that trust and relationship with a new director? 

Obviously working with someone you know - someone like [director] Jacques [Audiard] - I know him very, very well because we met when we were in our 20s, and we are now close to our 70s. It has nothing to compare with any other work relationship.

I think this is more like sisterhood and brotherhood. As far as working with directors that I don’t know or they don’t know me - which is maybe even more difficult for them than for me - 

it can turn to a nightmare, or it can be real fun.

I don’t think I could have done a job where I would have stayed in the same office for 30 years, so I think it’s wonderful to have the opportunity to meet new people, and to meet people that are maybe not your age, because I’m now becoming kind of old and I like working with people that are younger than me, that have another culture. It’s so interesting. 

Working with someone you know very well is… I don’t know if it is more comfortable, because in a way, you owe this person a lot because this person trusts you and you trust this person or you wouldn’t have done so many things with this person. But it’s refreshing to meet new talents, new directors and new cultures.

At this point in your career - after ten films together - does that afford you more leeway or freedom with him because you know each other so well?

Jacques is someone who likes to give freedom to the people he works with. That’s the amazing thing with him. I think the whole crew always gives the best of themselves because they know that they matter.

He doesn’t have any ego.

Anyone is allowed to say something. Anyone who passes by might say, “I think this should could be a little different here.” And he’d say, “You think so? Well, give me a note.” There’s no authority. There’s nothing like that.

No power. I’ve always been totally free with him, maybe more and more, because now he knows that when I really insist on something - when I really want to do something in a certain way - he probably thinks, “Well, she might be right after all these years.” But I think he always felt like this. 

We allow ourselves to try anything. No one can say anything stupid. Sometimes I say anything that goes into my mind or he does the same. You are allowed to, even if it’s totally stupid. You can try it, and it’s not a problem. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.

If it works? Good! Let’s try it. That’s what I love because some directors are a bit scared with their editors. They are scared that the editor is going to take over because they are not self-assured. I met some directors that each time you were proposing something, they would say, “No,” they didn’t want to. They were really reluctant. You work for the film. You don’t work for yourself.

But sometimes it’s difficult for them to admit this. It can be really tricky when it’s like this, but if someone is open it can be such a wonderful job.

Director Jacques Audiard

I wanted to talk a little bit about the opening images of the film, especially the sounds and the music. They seem like such a prelude for the film. This is before you get to the crime scene photos. Can you talk a little bit about that? The mariachi and the city lights and the noises that are going on underneath that.

This shot of mariachi. Jacques shot that because he loved the costume. It wasn’t in the script. The guy was a set decorator that he thought he looked so great. He was from South America. The crew was mostly French and not many South Americans, except for the actors and singers. He liked this guy. He wanted to see him in this mariachi costume.

He wanted this shot to be in the movie, but it was difficult to find a place for it. We didn’t know where to put it. We tried several places, and we came to the conclusion that the only place it could be was the beginning of the movie, instead of getting into a drone shot of Mexico - which would have been nice, but kind of a regular shot.

We figured if we put this at the beginning of the movie, you already know you’re going to be in something a bit different. On the other hand, we didn’t want it to feel ridiculous. Then, we had the idea to mix it with the drone because we wanted to know where we were - to know that we were in this huge city, and also to show the night.

All the first parts of the movie are supposed to be at night. I don’t know if people notice it, because sometimes if there are electric lights in the rooms, you don’t really notice. We wanted to show that and show Mexico. And I really wanted the mariachi not to be realistic, because as you get into it with this weird way - you zoom a lot on the faces and then they fade into the drone shots of Mexico. 

And I wanted the music - the score that happens after - this singing. Then something you hear in the streets of Mexico are these little trucks with this voice saying that they are picking up things, like if you want to give up your dishwasher or whatever, you put them in the trucks.

Those two shots and those two pieces of music were really talking about Mexico.

Talk about intercutting Zoe Saldana s character - the lawyer - talking through her closing arguments. Basically, the film starts as she’s writing the closing arguments for another lawyer, her boss. At first she’s just thinking them through in her head or talking through them as she’s shopping in a bodega or a grocery store. Then, the next thing you know, she’s singing them outdoors. Then she’s typing them on a computer. Can you talk about intercutting those three different things, and when you chose to go from one to another?

When she’s at home, typing, that’s a different scene. That’s a scene we added because at first the movie didn’t start like this. We were going much straighter into the street scene, but people really didn’t understand who Frida was or what she was doing, so we added this scene that was shot afterward where she’s at her house, and you understand that she’s kind of the slave to her boss.

She’s doing something she doesn’t agree with. We figured it would be easier for people - when we get into the streets - to understand that her song is like her fantasy of universal justice. It’s also realistic about the plea she’s writing. It goes really fast because she’s very nervous and she imagines herself with the crowd following her and agreeing with her that universal justice could exist.

On the other hand, she’s doing this creepy plea that she doesn’t agree with. She knows the guy is a murderer. So I tried to mix very quickly those realistic things to those non-realistic things. It was also for practical reasons that I had to put these shots where she writes because it was shot on sets in a studio and, the set was not very long, so they had to go piece by piece.

Sometimes, joining the two pieces wouldn’t quite fit, so I had to find some other shots to put in there, so that’s how that’s how it happened. Or sometimes I’d add them if I wanted to make a cut in the song. Also, she’s getting more and more excited with her plea, so the rhythm is faster and faster until it finally gets quiet.

Tone is one of those things that I think is very interesting to talk about, especially when a movie has such different tones as this one. Eventually Zoe’s character finds herself kidnapped, and she ends up in a truck with a leader of a cartel. That has a very specific dark, frightening tone to it. You go from that to this big fantasy musical number in a medical facility with this bright fantastic feel. How do you navigate those tones and being able to get the audience to comfortably switch from one to another? 

I tried to feel it as if it was all a big, musical sheet, even if it was not the singing parts. It’s cut very abruptly, but even when it’s not cut abruptly - which I personally like a lot. It’s abrupt because I might be an abrupt person, I don’t know, but I like it because I think it’s natural. Because that’s how Rita - Zoe - thinks. She’s excited.

She’s going to get rich. She books a seat in first class,then you open the door of this weird hospital - supposedly in Bangkok - and it’s this supermarket of boobs and asses and I think the scene itself is so fun. It was so different that I personally didn’t have to do much.

I just had to open the door of the first shot and then she’s in this. So it goes kind of naturally from the fear of Manitas [the cartel leader]. Once she accepted the deal, I think she’s very excited and you can see that she’s going to buy herself some jewelry.

The dream comes true because she’s always been like a slave and she’s always been under-employed, and now she’s going to have fun, so I thought we should have fun, too. 

Let’s talk about the intercutting of the conversation with the doctor and Manitas’ family. There’s a scene where Zoe’s job is supposedly to find a doctor that will perform the surgery for Manitas. She brings a doctor to Mexico for an interview, and while the interview is going on with Manitas, you are not watching the interview, but a scene with Manitas hanging out with his family. Was that the way it was planned, or did you find that that offered some purpose to intercut those? 

I don’t remember the script on this scene, but the plan for the scene was that it was supposed to take place over several days. That doesn’t really happen in the final film because it was raining the day they shot it, so they were in mud.

It was really difficult to shoot this night scene, so they did less than maybe was planned. In this early part of the movie Rita [Zoe’s character] is more the main character, then Manitas becomes the main character when she becomes Emilia.

I wanted this night to be a mental scene. I showed this scene to one of my sons and he said, “Well, it looks like she took acid.” There were no inside shots of Manitas and the doctor talking in the truck. It was a lot about all the people in the camp, all the sicarios dancing and Rita being scared, because Rita’s life is at stake.

Emilia’s life is at stake too, but we thought it would be more interesting to keep with the feelings: what Rita fears as she watches Manitas. Is she scared? Is she moved? You don’t really know. At the end, I think she’s pretty moved. This night is like a journey to me.

I love this scene because I think it’s a very emotional scene. It’s more of something that I did with my instinct than with my brain, I think. The first cut of this scene was the last cut. It kind of never changed. I tried it with lots of different temp score. In the end, it’s a very simple score with no real melody.

I love the moment in that scene where we’re introduced to Selena Gomez’s character, and it’s kind of sprung on you, just like it’s sprung on Zoe Seldana’s character. It takes her by surprise. 

Yeah. It’s fun to discover Selena this way. I like when she meets Rita, but I also like when Rita watches the family looking at the stars, being happy. It’s the last time you will see him with the kids.

It’s all a dreamy mix.

You don’t know if it’s really what Manitas said, or if it is what Rita imagines. Then she meets Selena. Now it’s a realistic scene again. It’s like a kind of acid trip, like my son said. It’s cut so that the scene is not too grounded.

One of the other tricks - I would think with this - is the macro-pacing of it: the pacing of the big story beats. I would think that once you got your editor’s cut done, you had to decide how much time you were going to spend - for example - before his surgery and how much time you were going to spend between whatever between each of the big story beats. Can you talk about regulating that and the evolution of that?

I don’t think we thought it’s this way. Jacques doesn’t watch his dailies during shooting because he doesn’t have time. He wants to focus on the next day of shooting instead of what he’s already done. I start cutting immediately, then when he arrives in the cutting room, one or two weeks after the end of shooting, he wants to see a cut that won’t be much longer than the final cut.

If it’s planned to be a two hour movie, he says to me, “I don’t want the first cut to be more than two hours and 15, so do what you want to take some scenes out. I don’t care. We’ll put them back if I want, but I want to see something that looks like a film.” 

So I didn’t really think about how long should this scene or that scene should be. I noticed - once it was done - that the first part was really, really, fast. Maybe too fast. Some people were saying it was going so fast that they couldn’t keep up.

Then the second part of the film - especially when they start the nonprofit organization - the pacing changes. This was how the movie was written. I didn’t feel the need to rush in the first part, I noticed that it was rushing maybe because Rita is very excited.

So maybe that’s why it’s rushing, I don’t know. In the second part, we moved some scenes more than in the first part. In the first part, we removed a few things, and in the second part we removed a bit more. We moved and we removed some scenes, but not because of pace - because of characters. In the first part, Rita is really the main person.

In the second part, she disappeared for some time. So we tried to balance it so that she’s always with us. Losing Rita happens a bit naturally because Emilia becomes the main character in the second part. Rita is her friend, but she’s not leading the story anymore. They have to share.

Jacques asked you to make sure the film was no longer than about 2:15, so that’s obviously left to you. How close were you? I’m assuming you assembled the whole thing, then realized you were at 2:40 or something? 

Not really. If there is something I don’t like as I’m cutting, I get rid of it. He wants to be surprised by what he sees. He says, “I wrote the script. I shot the script. Now I’m kind of bored with all this. I want to I want to see something new.

I want to see a movie I haven’t seen yet.” He wants you to try anything, because otherwise he gets bored. He’d rather have fun and try anything. It’s like we take the script and throw it on the ceiling, and we see how it falls back. That’s what we often do.

On this one we couldn’t do it as much because the story is kind of linear. Also because we couldn’t have two songs in a row, then wait half an hour to have another song, so the songs kind of dictate the pace of the rest of the movie. 

When Emilia Perez finally meets her family, I loved the reaction shots to Zoe. Can you talk about the power or purpose of a reaction shot?

This movie is more like a fable. If the movie was realistic, Selena should have recognized that Emilia is her ex-husband. She had two kids with him, so she should recognize him, but she doesn’t. With the reactions to Zoe, we thought we should emphasize the fact that there is a risk, so we really emphasize Zoe’s face: what’s going to happen?

So, that’s why we needed to have Rita - to balance this and really realize that there was a risk for for her to be recognized. Some viewers asked, “How come she doesn’t recognize her husband?” In this movie, you have to accept the fable part, because otherwise, you won’t like the movie. 

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Emilia gets into bed with her kids. And her child says,  “You smell like papa.” Then there’s a beautiful song about all the different ways that he smells. It’s just lovely. 

It’s a lovely scene and very, very emotional. When I edited it, I cried. Karla Sofia was also really moved when she did it. Probably this happened to her in her real life as she transitioned herself. She’s an actress so she can do anything - and she obviously is acting in this scene - but I feel she probably was very moved.

You can feel it. I really tried to show more of Emilia than the kids, because I think we needed to see how Amelia was moved. At the end there is the very wide shot where we see the stars on the ceiling that are the same stars that they were watching the last time she was with her family in the camp.

I love the writing of the lyrics that he “smelled like pebbles in the warm sun” or something like that. Then there’s a sicario montage. Can you talk about that? It’s when they’ve created the NGO - the nonprofit - to find all these disappeared people and Zoe’s character, Rita interviews a bunch of sicarios. I would think you needed to compress that. Maybe not. Was that multiple scenes compressed to a montage or was it always meant to be a montage?

I don’t remember how it was scripted. Jacques improvises. He took 3 or 4 guys that were on set and they kind of improvise like they were being interviewed by a cop. So we took what we had. We didn’t have that much material. What they say is really violent, awful. They burn people. They cut people into pieces. It’s like trash.

Obviously we don’t want to put too much trash in there. But on the other hand, we need to know that these people are kind of monsters. It’s all fade outs. Superimposes. You can see the map with all the people that disappeared, that have been abducted.

Everything goes on at the same time. You hear these terrible things. You see the pictures of the people who had been abducted or killed, then you see Rita looking shocked. At the same time, you see the creation of the NGO - installing the place, putting new benches, seats, finding bodies. It’s a montage to tell you how the NGO started.

Talk to me about cutting in Spanish - which a lot of the film is. I don’t know you well enough to know that you don’t know Spanish, but…

Spanish is easy for us French. It’s a Latin language. I understand a lot of words. I don’t understand the grammar, obviously, but I understand a lot of words. And I had the dailies subtitled. Honestly, it wasn’t a problem. I also have Google Translate or whatever. People say, “Oh, you can’t judge a performance if it’s not in your language.

But I don’t agree with that. I think it’s kind of a music you’re hearing. And with this movie - which is a musical - it didn’t matter because it’s all kind of music. You can appreciate the acting by the gestures, the body language.

So to me it’s not a problem. Jacques always says that he prefers directing movies that are in a language he doesn’t understand because he doesn’t have to think about the meaning of what they are saying. He just thinks of the music.

That’s how he knows if he likes this take or he don’t like this take - more than if he was thinking, “She didn’t say the exact right words!” He doesn’t have to bother about this. He just listens to the music. And I think with the editing, you can do exactly the same.

I agree that the performance is obvious no matter what the language is. You know when someone’s telling the truth, or how they’re emoting. I think you don’t need to understand the words. 

Can you remember scenes that got cut out and the reasons why you felt like they needed to to go?

There were some scenes that were cut out - not that many. There was a scene that was cut out that I think we don’t miss at all after Emilia meets Epiphania. Epiphania comes to her office and her husband, is dead. Her husband was a terrible guy.

Emilia and Epiphania decide that they should see each other again. Then there was a scene where they go for a date. Epiphania didn’t know how to dress to go to the restaurant. She knows that she’s going to have dinner with this lady. So she was asked a friend: “How should I get dressed?”

But we figured: let’s get right to it. They say, “We should see each other again” then there is this beautiful shot in Epiphania’s apartment where Emilia gets into the frame, starting to prepare a cup of coffee, and it does everything we really needed. It was so much more pure. It told more about the love story. 

Later in the movie, there’s a love song and I cut in some bits of that deleted scene. There were 2 or 3 shots I loved and I wanted them to be in the song, so I put them in. So there are a few scenes like this that we skipped, but not that many.

Also, we had a scene when Emilia was abducted, but we cut it out and you learn about it when the police arrive and say she’s been abducted.

To go back to the very beginning where we were talking about working with new directors: You mentioned how Jacques likes you to make sure the film is the length that a film should be. I’ve also heard this from other people. William Goldenberg says Paul Greengrass is the same way. “Show me something that’s a decent length. I don’t want four hours. I don’t want three hours.” But what do you do when you’re with someone new? How do you deal with it then? 

When I’m with someone new, I prepare - if I have time - two versions: one that sticks to the script, and another that is like I think it should be. Then I ask this director: “Do you want me to show you the scripted version, or would you like to discover the other version, or would you like maybe we watch first the script version and then we could watch the other one.”

It’s their movie.

Jacques once told me, “You don’t realize that I am naked here.” This is really true. And as an editor, I had never realized this before. I remember it was one day we were having some argument and I said, “I make 2 or 3 movies a year, and if everyone was as obstinate about this as you were, it would be unbearable!”

That’s when he said to me, “But you don’t realize that I am naked.” I understood this. Since then - which was about maybe 15 years or 20 years ago - I realized it’s the truth. We editors should be really cooperative and tolerant with directors. It’s a really hard job.

I’ve talked to other editors about that exact same idea of the director being naked or vulnerable in the editing room, because I’ve often asked, “Don’t you feel vulnerable yourself when you’re showing a first cut?” And somebody said to me, “The director’s not looking at your first cut. They’re looking at every mistake they made or everything that went wrong with their directing. They’re not worried about you, actually.”

Yeah, exactly. It’s true. I guess that’s why I personally remained an editor and never had the envy to become a director because I think I couldn’t do it. It’s too hard. I feel sorry for them. Sometimes I think we’re in a good place. We are in a safe place.

Even if we are - like you said - scared when we show something for the first time, but really there’s no risk for us. For them there is a risk. 

Juliette, thank you so much for your time today. I really enjoyed talking about this movie. 

Me too. Thank you very much. See you next time.