For the better part of three months, I have been kicking myself for missing my only opportunity to see Emilia Pérez in theaters at the Telluride Film Festival. But now that the film has been unceremoniously dumped on Netflix—as all Netflix-acquired films are—I am suddenly at peace with my decision to call a last-minute audible and abandon the Emilia Pérez screening to attend a Q&A for Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice.

That is not to say that Emilia Pérez is bad, nor that seeing the movie in a theater wouldn’t have improved the experience (the theatrical experience makes every movie better). It’s just that the film fails to fully embrace its lofty (and disparate) aspirations. Writer-director Jacques Audiard’s latest film tells the story of Rita (a refreshingly raw Zoë Saldaña, thankfully not covered in green paint or CGI’d into a giant blue creature), a downtrodden lawyer forced to bury her conscience to free corrupt men from their crimes. Dejected after successfully acquitting a prominent media figure who murdered his wife by having her death ruled a suicide, Rita receives an ominous phone call requesting a meeting at a nearby newsstand. As she waits for her mysterious contact, Rita is bagged and grabbed by a group of men, putting her face-to-face with the merciless cartel kingpin Juan “Manitas” Del Monte.

Manitas, portrayed by trans actor Karla Sofía Gascón in a truly astonishing breakout performance, wishes to receive gender-affirming surgery and leave her life of crime behind. Rita’s job is to find a surgeon to discreetly perform the procedure and establish new identities for Manitas, her wife Jessi (pop superstar Selena Gomez), and their two children. Rita is successful and, for her efforts, is rewarded with a staggering sum of money, while Manitas stages a fake death and begins her true life as the titular Emilia Pérez.

Four years later, Emilia and Rita’s paths cross again, with Emilia realizing that living without her children is no life at all. Once more, Emilia enlists Rita’s help, this time to reunite her with her family under the guise that Emilia is Manitas’s long-lost cousin, tasked with caring for the family in the event of tragedy. With her family back under one roof—and her former wife and children unaware of her true identity—Emilia, again with Rita’s help, establishes a nonprofit dedicated to locating the missing persons who have disappeared due to cartel activity.

Try as she might to atone for her past, the sins of Emilia’s former life leave her ill-equipped to navigate the new one she has built for herself. When Jessi objects to their new living arrangement, the domineering traits of Manitas resurface, threatening to unravel everything Emilia has worked so hard for. You may already be thinking that this Spanish-language crime-comedy family drama from a French director is one of the most ambitious films you’ve ever heard of (you’d be right). And I haven’t even mentioned that it’s a musical yet.

Not just any musical, either, but a rock-inflected fiesta of sung dialogue adapted from the director’s opera libretto of the same name, which itself was (very loosely) based on Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute. To call Emilia Pérez’s ambitious would be as obvious as saying the sky is blue. To its credit, the film’s kinetic disposition had the patrons of the Telluride Film Festival buzzing with enthusiasm. But from the comfort of one’s couch—and without the thin Telluride mountain air clouding one’s judgment—Emilia Pérez struggles to connect with audiences.

The film’s “La Vaginoplastia” musical number—performed as Rita tours a gender-affirming and plastic surgery clinic in Bangkok—has already been clipped on Twitter and torn to shreds out of context (not that it’s all that great in context, but I digress). Furthermore, there has been an upswell of trans voices rallying against Emilia Pérez for what it gets wrong. For instance, a scene in which Emilia puts one of her sons to bed, and he remarks that she “smells” like his father, has received scrutiny for the simple fact that a trans woman on hormone replacement therapy would not retain a male odor. As someone with no place dissecting* the validity *of Emilia Pérez’s depiction of the trans experience, I can only offer the opinion that reality doesn’t seem to be what this musical is reaching for.

That being said, the hit-and-miss nature of the film’s songs does it no favors. The music ranges from forgettable to downright bad (see the aforementioned “La Vaginoplastia”), with no composition standing out as the defining song of the film, despite the best efforts of even the most musically gifted actors in its cast. Even when Emilia Pérez leans on the sonic talents of Selena Gomez—which it does less often than you’d expect—it can’t disguise the fact that she is outclassed by the two actresses she shares the screen with. The Cannes Film Festival disagrees; Emilia Pérez won the Jury Prize, and its female ensemble was collectively awarded Best Actress. But I doubt Gomez will be able to ride this film’s coattails to an Oscar nomination, much less Oscar gold.

Which brings us to Emilia Pérez’s awards chances. Coming out of Cannes (which, it’s worth noting, is a French festival), Emilia Pérez seemed poised to be a genuine front-runner for this year’s Academy Awards. But following a tidal wave of social media backlash and Letterboxd user criticism (I mean no disrespect, for I am among your tribe), that cherished Oscar gold seems to be slipping from its fingers. Netflix can never truly be counted out of an awards race, and the studio will undoubtedly throw considerable resources behind the film, which may well be enough in what is one of the most wide-open Oscar seasons ever. Should Gascón be recognized for her work, she would deservedly earn the first nomination for an openly trans actor. And if Robert Downey Jr.’s recent win is any indicator, the Academy might not be able to resist rewarding Saldaña for simply being free of the MCU machine.

Ultimately, though, awards forecasting doesn’t answer the question: “Should you click on Emilia Pérez instead of doomscrolling Netflix for an hour before rewatching your favorite childhood sitcom?” The answer is a resounding yes. *Emilia Pérez *is not a car crash you can’t look away from, but a film that impresses even as it disappoints. Like an outclassed boxer weathering the storm of twelve rounds with a world champion, Emilia Pérez never lost my engagement and, despite its flaws, earned my respect. If nothing else, there is nothing else like Emilia Pérez, and for my money, novelty is refreshing in all its forms.