Selena Gomez Delivers Her Most Striking Performance Yet In The New Trailer For Emilia Pérez

Selena Gomez’s career is sure to reach new heights after the release of her latest film, Emilia Pérez, starring Zoe Saldaña and Spanish telenovela star Karla Sofía Gascón. Director Jacques Audiard’s crime drama musical follows the story of a Mexican drug lord's gender-transition journey and escape from a life of crime and violence. Saldaña plays the righteous lawyer that agrees to help Gascón’s reformed crime boss reunite with her children, and Gomez puts her acting chops to the test as Jessi, the estranged wife.

In the newly released trailer, we see Saldaña’s character facilitate what looks like a reunion between Gomez’s character and the reformed crime boss, who now goes by the name Emilia Pérez. In her belabored, yet forceful Spanish, we catch a glimpse of what can only be described as one of Gomez’s most striking performances, with dramatic musical numbers and lots of crying and emotionally charged shots. (Among the film’s many original songs, “El Camino,” Gomez’s solo performance, is “sure to become the film’s anthem,” according to Variety.)

When it comes to Gomez’s career, the actress has said that she has some regrets about not being able to prepare as much as she would’ve liked, especially when it came to her Spanish. She told AP News that, “overall I hope it doesn’t hinder my performance,” but that she was just so passionate about a role, that she “was full throttle and I wanted to be a part of this so badly.”

As baroque and bizarre as this all-Spanish, crime-comedy musical’s premise may seem, it received one of the longest standing ovations during its Cannes Film Festival premiere. In any imaginable way, this is truly Gomez as we’ve never seen her before.