Ema (2019): Sacrificial Rites, Reggaeton Remix
Pablo Larraín took all the repressed emotion, drive, and sexuality absent from the exploration of mythmaking in Jackie (2016) and poured them into Ema, which, under the double weight of it all, at times slips into a purely animal, hypnotic rhythm.
In interviews, the director described his heroine as a kind of Mother Nature figure, although that feels more like ambition than reality. Ema is closer to a sacrificial victim forced to dance herself to death in a fertility rite from Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. It’s worth keeping in mind that at the ballet’s premiere, the audience booed the orchestra, hurled objects at the stage, and even started fights.
Around this piece, the Chilean choreographer José Vidal created his own Rito de Primavera. Its excerpts we see in the opening scene, set against the pixelated sun. A remarkably fitting beginning that gives us a compass for navigating the story despite the absence of a clear linear narrative. You have dancing, fire, and sex — all of it performed for the sake of a child. How is that any different from pagan ritual? It just isn’t.
Get Inner Latitude | Why not?’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
That moment near the end of the film, when Ema explains her journey and decisions to the other characters, is priceless: the looks on their faces are those of people who have just encountered extraterrestrial intelligence for the first time. And in a way, that is exactly what has happened.
After all, the heroine’s story begins in isolation, starting with the marital bed itself. She loves her young students, yet even there she is pushed away. Ema is isolated from the system because it is not her system, not her rhythm.
The moment she chooses to be herself — in dance, in method, in instinct — the world begins to bend around her. Yes, her methods are questionable, but who blames a poisonous plant for being toxic? One simply shouldn’t touch it. And yet how can you not, when it is so brightly coloured?
And Aníbal, played by Santiago Cabrera, could not resist either.
His seduction scene is pure gold — absolute masterclass territory. Describing the dynamics of his marriage, he says that his wife sleeps on top of him, and that it suffocates him. Ema replies: “I’m going to take my clothes off and sleep under you.” She had him right there. No breasts, no ass, no legs can produce the same effect.
It’s primal magic, which is probably why the entire film is built out of colour and music, while nearly all the dialogue sounds a bit corny and strangely out of place. Honestly, I suspect you could cut three-quarters of the lines and lose absolutely nothing.
What actually matters are things like the orgasm scenes. Ema climaxes loudly; the lawyer does it quietly. And that, right there, is the real character study.
For the actors, it was improv theatre to some extent: they never saw the full script and were given only the lines for specific scenes shortly before shooting. Meanwhile, the music had been written before filming even began, so the story essentially followed the melody. This way, there was a lot of uncertainty, with small decisions constantly being made without anyone knowing where they would lead. That’s not cinema; that’s life right there.
I like Larraín’s process. I love the way he thinks, the way he experiments, and the things he connects us to as viewers. What I do not always love is the final result.
Ema, with its fractured reggaeton rhythm, the blazing colours of Valparaíso, and bursts of random violence, turned out far better than I expected. It feels surprisingly cohesive: the music, the style, the clothes. The heroine does not challenge the world with her hair colour or sharp earrings; she exists that way. She’s an alien drawn to a baby alien: have you seen that child’s impenetrable expression? What an inspired casting decision.
She tears through the rhythm of ordinary life the way The Rite of Spring tears through music itself with its experiments in metre and dissonance.
Larraín’s first film set in present-day Chile is bursting with life — alien life, pulsing to the rhythms of reggaeton with occasional intrusions from a 1913 ballet.
Guess they’re right: there is such a thing as spatial dark energy after all, and it has its own rhythm, and apparently, it’s reggaeton.
Yes, yes, I know. I’d prefer it to be something from the 1950s or 60s, just for the hell of it.
But E.T. Ema would never dance to Elvis.
