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Ema review: Pablo Larrain’s portrait of a lady on fire is a sustained frenzy of dance, sex and arson
FirstpostLanguage: Spanish A traffic light blazes against the night sky of a neon-coated city. The opening shot of Pablo Larraín’s Ema introduces us to the titular character, and heralds what is to come. In the process, Di Girolamo’s slicked-back platinum-blonde punk AF heroine will burn down every structural, social and sexual barrier preventing her from blazing her own trail of freedom. Ema and her friend remind him of its empowering nature to women and the intrinsically sexual nature of dancing itself, arguing it is essentially sex with clothes on, or as George Bernard Shaw once described it, “the vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalised by music.” Larraín thus uses reggaeton as a reaffirmation of female desire, and the exaltation of freedom. Ema is Larraín’s very own “portrait of a lady on fire.” Ema is now streaming on Mubi India.
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In Pablo Larraín's Ema, street dance becomes a liberating force for chaos and change
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