Review: 'Ema' is a Searing, Hypnotic Queer Film

Dance in film often expresses what words cannot fully articulate, arousing elusive emotions. Sometimes, the way someone dances conveys how they live their life. "Ema" is a hypnotic, seductive, and searing film.

Mariana Di Girolamo stars as Ema, a queer reggaeton dancer full of defiance and intensity and free of inhibitions. Gael García Bernal stars as her choreographer husband, Gastón. A Chilean film directed by Pablo Laraín, "Ema" premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019. I loved Pablo Laraín's "Jackie," an unusual and unconventional biopic. I've pondered "Ema" ever since I first saw it last year.

After a horrific tragedy, Ema brims with guilt and shame over sending her 6-year-old adopted son Polo (Cristián Suárez) back to the orphanage. This incident, compounded by Gastón's infertility, strains their marriage severely. Ema finds information on, and then stalks, Polo's new adopted family, Lawyer Raquel (Paola Giannini) and firefighter Anibal (Santiago Cabrera). And she ends up seducing each of them.

Mariana Di Girolamo and Gael García Bernal excellently capture the complex and conflicting emotions their characters feel. Di Girolamo portrays a complicated and intriguing protagonist who often makes what some might deem questionable decisions. Yet, she always stays true to herself. "Ema" conveys how people do (or don't) move through trauma, the meaning of family, and the depths of a mother's devotion.

Ema and Gastón hurl brutally cruel words to each other, blaming each other for Polo's absence: Ema calls Gastón "a human condom"; he retorts that he gave her a "real" son but she "threw him out," and then taunts her by mimicking Polo, pleading not to leave him. While not harnessing the same intensity,. their vitriol and fury are reminiscent of the cutting barbs in the masterful film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

The guilt of abandoning Polo torments Ema. She insists throughout the film that she is Polo's mother. A haunting shot shows Ema resting her head on Gastón's back. The camera zooms out to reveal them sitting on a race car bed that clearly belonged to Polo.

For Ema, dancing is rebellion and freedom. She dances on basketball courts and by the ocean. In an enthralling dance sequence (one of my favorite scenes in the film), Ema and the other dancers in the company gyrate and contort their bodies, illuminated by chromatic light with close-up video footage of the Sun looming behind them: Quivering, pulsating, and dominating.

While Gastón is also queer, the film focuses on Ema: Her emotions and desires. We see the queer female gaze as she and Raquel flirt and touch. Sex scenes are lit in blue, purple, or green light – like the dance scene with the Sun – including a sex montage cutting between Ema with each of her lovers and her friends (her tightly- circle of women friends is incredibly loyal and supportive of her). As with a celestial object, everyone and everything in the film orbits Ema.

Rarely still, the camera moves fluidly with Sergio Armstrong's kinetic cinematography, mirroring Ema's dancing as well as her restlessness and anguish. Fire is a motif in the film, and there are arresting scenes of a burning stoplight and burning swing set. Nicolás Jaar's ethereal, downtempo electronic score accompanies the film beautifully.

"Ema" is a vibrant and visceral collision of beauty, pain, family, dance, and sex. It's a kaleidoscopic explosion of emotion. An intriguing protagonist, Ema moves through this undulating film with a serpentine and sinuous fluidity, eschewing boundaries as she goes. Hypnotic dance sequences and slowly throbbing music coalesce to create a film evocative of a fever dream.

"Ema" is available on DVD, BLU, and VOD November 16, 2021.