Song and dance: Emilia Pérez
Posted on Jan 25, 2025 by Katie Kasperson
Pierre-Marie Dru, executive music producer and music supervisor on Emilia Pérez, talks getting the Cannes Jury Prize-winning movie musical across the finish line
WORDS | Katie Kasperson
Winning the Soundtrack Award, Best Actress and Jury Prize at Cannes last May, Emilia Pérez – written and directed by Jacques Audiard – is a movie musical that rests neatly between crime thriller and comedy. Detailing the fictional story of a cartel leader as he transitions to being a woman, the film features 16 original musical numbers plus a score, composed by Camille and Clément Ducol and supervised by Pierre-Marie Dru.
SETTING THE STAGE
This being Audiard’s first musical, Dru played an essential role in getting the film off the ground, guiding the writer-director through each step, which he describes as ‘working backwards’. “It’s like you’re working on post-production before production. When you’re doing a musical, you need playbacks – you must be very precise on-set,” Dru shares. Emilia Pérez was an iterative process, to say the least; though the cast and crew started with a plan to lip-sync, Audiard favoured singing live, which required a new team altogether. “The final product is a mix of the playback, the live sequences and the post-sync,” explains Dru, with the live recordings giving the cast a little more freedom and allowing them to deliver an uninterrupted performance.
The ensemble cast – which includes Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Karla Sofía Gascón and Adriana Paz – was a mixed bag in terms of musical experience. Dru arranged vocal coaches for each of the actors, with sessions generally taking place over Zoom. “We were in a studio in Paris, and she was amazing – a true singer,” Dru says of Saldaña, whose background is in dance. “With Selena, it was the same,” he adds, noting that her song Mi Camino was written in one week, in the midst of production, to give her character more emotional depth. “We sent it to Selena, and she was very moved. She’s an amazing singer, so it was easy.”
Gascón, who plays the titular character, had less musical experience and practised for two years to fine-tune her voice and record her playback tracks. “We worked a lot with her, the team, the coaches, Camille and Clément day by day,” describes Dru. “It’s a long way down to Reno, as you say in the US. She worked so much on the movie.”
Besides the musical numbers, Dru oversaw the score, composed by Ducol and Camille. “We collaborated with the whole team to think of one sound,” he articulates, mentioning that Audiard wanted the film to have a single sonic aesthetic – or architecture, as Dru phrases it. The score combined instrumentals with vocals from The Mexican Choir – as well as Camille’s own voice. “These arrangements are very beautiful and unique,” states Dru.
COMING TOGETHER
Bringing Emilia Pérez to life was a five-year endeavour that only concluded mere days before the Cannes deadline. “Jacques was always changing things like it’s a sculpture,” admits Dru. “When you’re doing that with voices, music and songs, it’s complicated. It was this puzzle that was hard to join together.” He adds: “I have 20 songs in my Dropbox that aren’t in the movie.”
Because of this final push, which ultimately paid off given the film’s reception at the festival, releasing the soundtrack became an afterthought. “When we worked on the final production, we ran to go to the festival, so were only focused on the movie,” Dru reveals. Now, the 92-minute soundtrack, with both the score and original songs, is available.
Despite being a Spanish-language film, Emilia Pérez was primarily shot in Paris, and Audiard, Dru, Ducol and Camille are all French. “There was a language [barrier],” says Dru, who had a personal connection to the project as his grandmother was Spanish. “I was back to my roots in a way,” he muses, “while also diving into something very new.
“Working with Jacques, every day is an adventure,” Dru concludes. “The journey is never what you expect; it brings surprises. Those five years were intense but also filled with joy. It was the most amazing experience of my professional life.”
Emilia Pérez is now available to stream on Netflix
This story appears in the January 2025 issue of Definition
