Mark Reviews Movies: EMA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 12, 2021

The eponymous character insists that the man will be horrified when he finally discovers her plan for him. There's plenty of discomfort and a little terror surrounding the central figure of Ema, who is selfish and self-centered beyond any apparent sympathy for others, uses and manipulates people, and has a habit of burning things, simply to get what she wants or just to watch them burn.

She passed that last characteristic on to her adopted son. It didn't turn out well for anyone involved, especially the family member whose face the son set ablaze. After abandoning the 6-year-old boy to the whims and the bureaucracy of the state, Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo) has had a change of heart.

Actually, perhaps it's more an affirmation of what is truly in her heart. She wants the son she adopted and then returned back. She says it's because of love, but maybe it's simply because Ema can no longer have him.

That's what the social worker says. That's what her older husband Gastón (Gael García Bernal) insists, while also making certain to remind his wife how the young boy begged and pleaded and cried when Child Protective Services arrived to take the boy, after his mother made the call in the first place. That's what fate, apparently, has in store for her desire.

The boy now is in a foster home or is part of some state facility or has been adopted by another family. Even if Ema has genuinely changed her mind, the deed is finished, and no amount of convincing, negotiating, or arguing will change what has been done.

That's the kicker, perhaps. Ema will figure out a solution, and maybe it's because she sincerely love the boy. More than likely, it's because everyone tells her she can't, a lot of people tell her she shouldn't, and there's no way in hell or on Earth that Ema will let other people tell her what she can and should do.

In certain ways, this story, which involves Ema's elaborate and multi-part plan to have the adopted son she abandoned returned to her, seems like a thriller, seen from the perspective of a character some might dub a femme fatale at best and a villain at worst. Ema uses her wiles, her sex appeal, and, on a more biological level, her body in order to enact the scheme. There's at least one other important thing that she uses, too: a flame-thrower, once used in a dance piece choreographed by Gastón.

Their marriage collapsing beyond repair. That's what we learn near the start of Guillermo Calderón, Alejandro Moreno, and director Pablo Larraín's screenplay, as Gastón scolds his wife for ridding the home of their son. Ema returns the favor by pointing out that, if not for the fact of his infertility, they wouldn't have had to adopt in the first place. There aren't many, if any, characters with whom to sympathize in this movie, and these two definitely don't fit that category.

We can't sympathize with them fully, but that seems to be part of the filmmakers' plan here. Take, for example, the two central targets of Ema's plan. They're firefighter Aníbal (Santiago Cabrera), whom Ema lures into her scheme by lighting a friend's car on fire (with the friend's permission, it should be noted, if only because how devious the character is), and attorney Raquel (Paola Giannini), whom Ema attracts by hiring the lawyer for her divorce from Gastón—making a down payment of sorts by dancing provocatively on a table in the office. Both of these characters are married but unhappy. Ema offers them an escape, a fantasy, and at least some orgasmic bliss—when Ema isn't busy dancing, getting into fights with Gastón, or having sex with any of these three or any of her dancer friends.

It's tough to sympathize wholly with these characters, but there is at least some understanding as to why they do what they do, how miserable they are, and why Ema appeals to them on some, almost primal level. She's a free spirit, seems to be bluntly honest about her intentions, and, because of that and more, possesses no small amount of sex appeal. Larraín gets right to the core of that, in a series of dynamic dance sequences (One, with a giant image of the sun illuminating the company, is striking, but so, too, is a montage of Ema and her friends dancing around various locales in the city) and a few scenes of some vigorous sex (Another montage, with Ema and her subsequent lovers bathed in blue light, is hypnotic in its imagery and, well, rhythms).

Beneath the ever-proceeding plot and Larraín's visual flourishes, though, is an attempt, not at a thriller or a dance showpiece or dream-like depiction of this world, but at a sincere, considered character study. Ema doesn't achieve much in that regard, on account of both its distractions and its apparent unwillingness to show us who Ema really is—not to mention the filmmakers' gradual deflections about her goals and methods. The movie's closing moments suggest a dream come true, until one considers the potential nightmare of more and worse happening, if and when Ema changes her mind again.

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