Overview: From renegade auteur Jacques Audiard comes Emilia Pérez, an audacious fever dream that defies genres and expectations. Through liberating song and dance and bold visuals, this odyssey follows the journey of four remarkable women in Mexico, each pursuing their own happiness.

The fearsome cartel leader Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón) enlists Rita (Zoe Saldaña), an unappreciated lawyer stuck in a dead-end job, to help fake her death so that Emilia can finally live authentically as her true self.

Verdict: There appears to be only one person in the musical Emilia Pérez who knows the kind of inconsistent movie they’re making.

That would not be Zoe Saldaña, here playing Rita Moro Castro: a disaffected defense lawyer who starts off criticizing Mexico’s corrupt justice system and ends up jamming a man’s face into the crotch of her red velvet pantsuit. It would not be Selena Gomez’s Jessi — the platinum-haired moll of a notorious drug lord, who ping-pongs between domestic distress and singing to her cellphone camera in a never explained or explored subplot about social media obsession.

And it is not the various bit parts scattered throughout. At times they tack serious, delivering heart-rending laments on the piles of unidentified human remains littering the Mexican landscape, innocent victims of the country’s unending drug wars. At others, they dance through operating rooms with goofily unnerving smiles plastered on their faces, chanting: Penis to vagina, or vagina to penis: what will it be?

Instead, the only character somewhat granted the gift of consistency is the one who also goes through the most obvious change: Emilia herself. Played by actress Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia is expectedly the heart and soul of the movie, and handles even the more ridiculous aspects — of which there is absolutely no shortage — with a serious consideration that emotionally grounds the story. At least, when it focuses on her.

That’s true even if the plot sounds like something of a fever dream. Prior to transitioning, Emilia is that notorious drug lord married to Jessica — a growling voice on the phone that hires Rita to track down the clinics, doctors and recovery spaces that will allow her to become the person she’s always wanted to be.

The only problem is the family she’ll have to leave behind — the wife and young children who are told nothing about any of these plans. Instead, Rita sets them up in a fancy Swiss mansion, helping them weather the media and political storm at home — after Emilia fakes her own death and goes on to live a new, secret life. That is, until she changes her mind four years later, re-employs Rita to bring her family back to Mexico, and poses as her own estranged cousin to force her way back into her sons’ lives.

But as convoluted as that sounds, that particular storyline takes up less than half of the 130-minute runtime. The rest is stuffed with the random side quests that define Emilia Pérez, crafting the meandering telenovela-style it’s often compared to, which works much better in a long-running TV format than film.