American singer and actress Selena Gomez joined her co-stars on the red carpet of the London Film Festival on Friday for the British premiere of her Oscar-tipped film Emilia Pérez.

The Spanish-language musical was one of the breakout hits at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where Gomez and three of her co-stars were jointly named best actress.

The others – Zoe Saldaña, Adriana Paz, Karla Sofía Gascón – appeared alongside Gomez in London, where the film hopes to continue its momentum in the awards race.

Emilia Pérez follows a Mexican cartel leader (played by Gascón), who asks a powerful lawyer named Rita (Saldaña) to help him fake his own death.

But the reason he wants to retire and disappear from the world of crime is not what you might expect: the cartel leader wants to change gender and live a new life as a woman.

The rest of the film focuses on four women, including the newly transformed Emilia Pérez, as they each pursue their own version of happiness in modern-day Mexico.

Pérez is played by Spanish trans actress Gascón, who has been tipped as a possible contender for best actress in the upcoming awards ceremony.

Gomez plays the drug lord’s wife, who remains in the dark about her former lover’s new identity, while Paz portrays Emilia’s new post-transition romantic interest.

All four of the film’s stars walked the red carpet on Friday ahead of the film’s UK premiere at the Royal Festival Hall, as part of the London Film Festival.

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French director Jacques Audiard came up with the idea for the film after reading a chapter in Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute about a drug lord who changes identities.

Audiard went one step further for the film and made it a gender transition story.

“I was less interested in changing identity to avoid competing drug lords, and more interested in changing identity for the sake of the person she was and is,” the director told BBC News. “I was more interested in the past. and what led to that transition.”

The role required a very specific person: a trans actress who spoke Spanish and who could also sing and dance.

Recalling the casting process, Gascón tells BBC News: “I was contacted while in Mexico by a production team and told: ‘We need an actress as crazy as you are – you’re the only one who can play this role , but you have to learn five songs for tomorrow!’

“And I was like, ‘Okay, let’s record the whole album and then we’ll go on tour as soon as you want!’” she joked. “But I did say, ‘This is going to be hard, I’m not a singer.’ But the team on the film worked incredibly with me, they really helped me with all the songs and made sure we could do the best job possible.”

When asked about Gascón’s casting, Audiard simply replied, “Without her, there would be no movie.”

Interestingly, the actress campaigned to play both the male and female roles – in other words, the character both before and after transition.

Audiard had originally intended for another actor to play the male drug lord Manitas because, the director explained, he “felt uncomfortable asking (Gascón) to revisit something that she turned away from”.

But Gascón recalled: “I said to Jacques: I want to play this role in the whole story, because it is important for me to play the full role. It wouldn’t be the same movie if another actor played it (Manitas).

That meant she had to use effects and makeup, like a fake beard, she explained, so she could play the drug lord in the first part of the musical.

“This movie is this movie because the same actress played the entire performance,” Gascón continued. “It’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime roles and I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to play it.”

Reviews of Emilia Pérez, which hits Netflix next month, have been generally positive so far.

“It’s a wild, rugged, glitter-drenched ride that defies convention and classification,” said Entertainment Weekly’s Maureen Lee Lenker.

She praised the film’s performances, saying, “Selena Gomez is a welcome surprise, with any remaining hints of her Disney Channel origins lost in her portrayal of a narco’s loving wife.

“The film’s climax, in particular, allows Gomez to shine in new ways as a dramatic actress. She conveys heartache and fear through a tortured physicality that thrusts her into the unpredictable state of a woman on the brink of something dangerous.”

Asked by the BBC’s Graham Norton If it was comfortable going back to the world of song and dance for the musical, Gomez said, “No, because this was completely different.

“They were complicated dance moves that I didn’t know my body could do, and I was also playing a character, so if anything I tried to avoid what I was comfortable with.”

There is also praise for Gascón, a “beautiful discovery” that delivers “a wonderful achievement”, said David Rooney of Hollywood Reporter.

Tim Robey of The Telegraph described it the film as “amazingly confident – ​​he’s smart, serious, ridiculous, knowing, powerful and absolutely crazy”, while Hoai-Tran Bui from Inverse said it was “an emotionally fulfilling triumph”.

However, not all critics were equally enthusiastic about the film.

“Emilia Pérez was originally intended as an opera, which may partly explain its saccharine sentimentality, repetitive lyrics and divergent narrative branches. But that is no excuse for its almost random, whiplash-inducing tonal pivots,” said Kyle Turner of Slant.

However, Lauren Bradshaw from Fangirl Freakout said: “Emilia Pérez is a magnificent, genre-bending thrill ride that transcends typical film construction and breathes a new burst of excitement into the way we think about film.”

As an actress, Gomez is best known for her leading role in Only Murders in the Building, but also has a successful singing career with hits such as Back To You, Wolves and Love You Like a Love Song.

Her co-star Saldaña has starred in a large number of blockbusters over the past twenty years, with roles in the Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy franchises.

It remains to be seen whether Emilia Pérez could be a major awards winner, but Academy voters may see an opportunity to recognize Saldaña’s box office success through this critically acclaimed work.

Their co-star Adriana Paz is a Mexican actress whose credits include Not Forgotten, Hilda and La Caridad.

But the film’s breakout star may be Gascón, who already had a successful acting career before making the switch in 2018.

Rooney praised her performance in his review, saying: “The warmth, the joyful self-realization, the complexity and authenticity… that illuminate (Gascón’s) characterization undoubtedly owe a lot to the parallels in the Spanish star’s life – In her own words, she was an actor before she became an actress, a father before she became a mother.”

Emilia Pérez has already been selected as the French entry for the best international feature film category for the Oscars, which will take place in March.