A Q&A with Golden Globe Winning Songwriter and Composer Camille

Emilia Pérez is a unique film in that it’s a French production about a Mexican cartel leader, spoken and sung in Spanish. As a French woman yourself, what was your process for writing music and lyrics for a story and setting that might initially seem quite distant from your own background?

Yes, good question. I consider the Emilia Pérez script like a Shakespearean script. It appeals to the human subconscious, to the human psyche, and its ability to transform itself. It’s set in Mexico, but to me the main plot has something to do with human transformation.As a woman, as a human being, I have a masculine and feminine side, so Emilia Pérez’s story appealed to me immediately. How can we relate to our masculine side or feminine side? In what way? Emilia Pérez’ story is the story of a person who changes everything but her heart and it’s her heart that is going to change the most. There is something very universal there.

The script also talks about the missing people, Los Desaparecidos, and their families. The families that are looking for the bodies of their beloved: their child, their lover, their mom or brother or sister or aunt or uncle or cousin or friend . Since I am a mother, I feel even more empathy toward other human beings. I relate to these women that scratch the earth, the ground, to find the bodies, the bones of the one they’ve lost. This is so human. It’s as if the ground gave birth again to their child. This is universal. You don’t have to be Mexican or French or English or anything to relate, to empathize, to support.

I feel thankful that life gave me the opportunity to write the song PARA with Clément about The Missing. Art is where worlds meet. Like in dreams. Like in desire. As a woman, as a mother and as a singer, I need to enchant the world so we can live in it.

Thanks to my work on Emilia Pérez, I felt also empowered to go very political and to denounce corruption, especially through the character of Rita. A woman that is stuck in her own paradoxes, in her own contradictions. A woman that evolves and becomes more coherent and empathic.

Corruption is universal and we all know that narco traffic is not a Mexican thing. Mexico is right next to the United States. And narco traffic is in Europe and everywhere. And corruption is everywhere. There’s a saying in French that says, “No one is a prophet in its own country”. And I guess when you’re outside of a country, you sometimes feel freer to denounce corruption in a foreign country in order to also denounce corruption in your own country.

Corrupted people are everywhere and corruption is in every one of us. We can all work on that. Anywhere we are. On a political and on an intimate level. Rita first fights corruption inside and outside of her. After Emilia and Jessi’s death, she finally meets her destiny becoming their children’s family. She is ready to fight for justice and protection on an intimate level. She is ready for love.

In Emilia Pérez, I also also related to universal themes of intimate love and tenderness through the songs EL AMOR, and PAPA, that I wrote and composed thinking of my own dad who passed away 13 years ago. These are themes that are present in my life as a woman, as a mother. And I guess Jacques enjoyed working with me because I could bring some intimacy, something very simple to those songs. BIENVENIDA also and MI CAMINO are literally feminist songs about how a woman can free herself, from her golden prison, from self-judgment and other people’s judgments. I like to call MI CAMINO a feminist anthem, a feminine MY WAY. Very gentle, very tender, very powerful.

I would like to say also that as a French woman I feel like a citizen of the World. France to me has the shape of a star open to the East, West, North and South. Emilia Pérez is a multicultural project that represents the French free spirit that I love.
Much of the music you wrote for the film takes an experimental approach. What is your strategy when it comes to experimentation in music? Do you embrace improvisation and unpredictability, or does your writing have a more pragmatic method?

My approach to music is definitely intuitive. I am a self-taught musician. I’ve studied literature and politics, but I willingly didn’t want to study music. I just wanted to do my own thing, go my own way. I learned music along with musicians, on stage with the public, recording my albums and working for films. As my dear friend Katheryn Bostic told me one day « I am a bird ». Do birds have a method ? I am intuitive and experimental. In the opening, the SE COMPRAN theme, I had a feeling that the film needed to start with a scream and should start like a street opera. I felt the score should anticipate the little girl’s voice in the loudspeaker that’s known in all Mexico and South America, you know, buying pieces of metal and fridges.

The chorus of EL ALEGATO: « Cuando hablamos de violencia » is a cry from the heart too, as for Rita’s rage in TODO Y NADA and her pledge in LADY. And PAPA really comes from the heart, and EL AMOR also. I also work with mantras and breaths. The words ARRIBA ABAJO are developed in the songs and in the score, like a leitmotiv. Sometimes I like to sing watching the scene. We had been struggling scoring for the surgery scene. We were looking for instrumentation and it did not really work. So I tried to sing along the scene. At the time I had just had a vocal extinction because of COVID. I related to the scene. I related to Emilia’s recovery and to her healing. I sang to Emilia as a way to take care of her and Jacques liked it.

Then there were some more technical moments that needed more method. For example, the hip hop parts and Rita’s flow in EL ALEGATO and EL MAL. So, I listened to French, American and Hispanic hip hop.

For EL ENCUENTRO, the first time Manitas speaks, I thought we needed something very precise in terms of rhythm. I thought of something that would be hypnotic and surreal. I thought the actress should not take her breath and sing in 240 bpms, that is 4hz. This frequency allows the brain to stop thinking.

So the method is to tailor the music to what needs to be said. And every song, every moment in the score has its own method or let’s say its own process. Like a scientific experiment – you search. So I wouldn’t say I have a method. My method is to search. And to search implies sometimes to do many different versions, which Jacques really pushed us to do. It is the only way – just try different versions and see what works best. I guess in that case, taking time is the method.

Regarding the lyrics; I need to sing what I am writing. I go for ultra precision in terms of sounds, rhythm and accentuation. I love working in Spanish because its consonants are very percussive : « Con verdictos pagados / que engordan periódicos / cuellos cortados al lado derecho/ las chicas bonitas al lado izquierdo y el morbo corriendo en las calles » is Rita’s harsh statement in the Opening. Latin consonants and open pure vowels give her so much strength in denouncing corruption. I took the fact that Spanish was not my native langage as an opportunity to express complexity with simple words. I also love the fact that Spanish is a gendered langage. A is feminine and O is masculine. It echoes Emilia’s will for transformation. In the song DESEO the vowels echo her mindset. « Yo solo deseo ser ella. » OOOEEOE A. The vowels speak for themselves. They evoke Emilia’s path to opening and to femininity. In the song EL AMOR the O and the A express how much she feels torn and how she wishes she could tell the truth about her whole Life to her lover and become one: « Medio muertO medio vivA » / « Medio AbajO / ArribA ». Adjectives first and then even adverbs become part of her torn destiny. Is there a third way between the O and the A? Love maybe ? Spirituality?
How does the music in the film compare or contrast from your usual musical style? Was there any challenge adapting your personal sound to what was expected from the director, or did you feel like you were free to establish the tone and style of the film’s songs and music?

The music, the score, the songs of EmIlia Perez are really a blend, a mixture of my style and Clément’s style. I don’t feel I’ve made any compromise with my style. It’s just that we mixed our worlds and ideas. Clément being more orchestral, more classical in his approach, because he comes from classical music and contemporary music.

We are both very percussive and melodic, and we both compose, but with a different sound approach: in Emilia Pérez I was more into vocals and breaths and words, and Clément more into electronics, arrangements and orchestration.

Jacques wanted something absolutely tailored to his story. At one point I felt he was worried that my style would be too recognizable, especially my vocals in the score. So we tried many different vocal options: we had the score sung by a Mexican choir, by a classical choir and by Hispanic mixed choir. In the end, we used my vocals as lead vocals. I was so connected to the story. And my musicality is one with my singing. But we blended the other choirs in my vocals to create different shades.

It’s the first time I direct a film cast. I’ve worked with theater actresses and actors but this was my first time working with a film cast. It was very interesting to convey my approach to singing to the cast. I demo-ed everything, so obviously the cast could listen to my vocal intonations and intention, pitch and rhythmical placement.

Then they brought their own soul to it. So the songs are a beautiful blend between singing direction and acting direction, between my style, each actresses’ personality and Jacques Audiard’s direction. A subtle mix of performance and expression.

I usually love to explore different vocal placements to discover new voices inside of me. Working on Emilia Pérez gave me an opportunity to explore the voice with actresses, and to make them discover new shades, new ways of expressing themselves through the voice to embody their characters. I also made sure the public can feel why each character sings. Emilia has never sung before. “Tough guys don’t dance » and they don’t sing either. Emilia dares to sing. Her singing as Manitas is a Swan song and as Emilia a way to open her heart and love. Rita’s songs are protest songs. She’s the preacher. The rapper. Her songs reveal what’s going on in her mind that she wished she could say out loud. Jessi is a bird that wants to fly out of the cage and she finally sings out of the box along with her own song. Epifanía embodies the voice of the people. Singing is like breathing for her and is a way to celebrate, praise and pray.
Both you and Clément come from musical families and started your own musical journeys relatively early in your lives. Is it important to you for your children to experience music in any kind of focused or academic way?

This is such a sweet question. I often feel like I met Clément because we were a little bit alike. We were very musical children. Music was very important to us very early in our life. And we both come from musical families.

My mom loves music and dancing. My dad was a songwriter. He wrote songs for his family. He didn’t do it professionally. He was a literature teacher, but he wrote beautiful songs, and he recorded an album before he died, which is called Places Traces, both in French and English. My brother is a pianist and songwriter, and my sister has produced concerts for a long time, and is now a playwright and theater director. Clément’s dad was a contemporary music composer. His mother is a music teacher. His sister sings and plays the piano and is a music teacher too.

As a child, I needed music the same way I needed food, light. Clément was trained very early on. As a teenager, I knew I was a singer. I wanted to be on stage and express myself. I believe that my need for music and Clément’s need for music, that need for intensity, musical intensity, brought us together.

We like creating together. We have two beautiful musical children. I believe, along with Bobby MacFerrin, who talks about that so beautifully, that the human species is a musical species. And we belong to the soundscape all animals create. Children are naturally musical. Especially when their parents make music or listen to music.

Music is a langage. A native langage. Both our children learn music academically and spontaneously. Of course, you need training for your instrument. You need training to understand harmony. But what is most important is to be musical, before even being a musician.

Sometimes I’m very moved because they relate to music the same way we do, and sometimes have similarities in the way they phrase their singing or their percussion or piano. I can hear something going on, like something has been transmitted, which is very beautiful. And then they have their own style, too. It’s so nice to see it develop through time.
How closely did you work with the actors while they were learning, rehearsing, and performing the music? Were there any moments when the cast had a hand in shaping the songs, once they had it in their hands?

Yes, I worked very very closely with the actors. I met them right after their were chosen by Jacques. With Clément we checked their vocal range, adjusted the keys of the songs. My assistant Lucille Chriki, who’s a beautiful singer, did the warm ups with them, took care of their voice and taught them how to musically match the demos.

We recorded the playbacks before the shooting. I really made sure it was very accurate musically. Then the actresses sang on top of the playbacks during the shooting and also live. So it was a double task. We needed to watch and keep track of the actress’ lip sync. And also, Clément, Lucile and I needed to supervise the live takes, and to let it go also. The final result is a blend of playbacks, live takes and ADR.

I’ve learned in the process that there is on one hand my need for precision, musical and vocal precision. And on the other hand the need to leave space for acting. And acting is sometimes off track. Sometimes the acting and the musicality are both perfect and sometimes acting goes somewhere else, rhythmically or musically. And it was very interesting to mix both and to go also for imperfection which made the vocals more expressive and more soulful.

Karla Sofia has this broken voice that brings so much truth to her character and Zoe has a wonderful Afro-Latino American feel in her groovy bouncy, steely voice. Selena’s voice sounds like the Milky Way, both round and airy. Adriana Paz has such a genuine , grounded voice. I could just listen to her sing for hours. She’s such a natural singer. She brings a lot of truth to the story.

Working with Mark Ivanir on the song LADY made me realize that the way he phrased naturally was the way to go. The character is both incorruptible and pragmatic. He is no crooner. And this is why we trust him: he’s the surgeon Emilia and Rita are looking for. So i let it go for imperfection there. He is a little ahead rhythmicaly. He half speaks half sings. I made sure the chords behind his voice sounded more like a score than like chords for a song. In PAPÁ also, the little boy is half asleep so the singing needed to be fragile. In EL AMOR, Emilia’s love song, I had envisaged something sung at the top of the voice for the chorus but in the end we went for something very intimate. It was better for the character’s evolution.

In BIENVENIDA Selena as Jessi, wakes up so it needed to be not too accurate even in terms of pitch. The voice warms up little by little. In MI CAMINO, Jessi sings along with her own song with Edgar Ramirez as Gustavo. Edgar loves singing and was fond of the song. He brought so much to the scene. It’s such a tender moment. They are a little out of tune and they laugh.

In BEATIFICACIÓN also, Emilia’s dying, and Jessi is in a state of shock. The song was originally much more operatic, more obviously melodic, but we had to make a compromise, which is a musical compromise, but not an expressive compromise because in the end it’s much more expressive to let the acting take over. Just, you know, sing in a whisper and not be completely accurate and it makes the public relate even more. I think singing out of tune or slightly out of rhythm makes people relate even more and empathize and identify.

It was really a big task to find the right balance between acting, singing and to really use the vocal imperfections as a strength. And then there were some adjustments concerning accents, the way to pronounce the « V » or the « S » for example. Jessi is American-Mexican, Rita is Mexican with Puerto Rican origins, Epifanía and Emilia are Mexican. Karla Sofia has lived in Mexico but she is Spanish. They each brought their own Hispanic feel to the songs.
Was there anything about the music you created that you feel would only work for this film at this moment? Any techniques or ideas that feel entirely unique to Emilia Pérez?

What the film allowed us to do is to go for variety, extreme variety. And this was allowed by the story of transformation of four women. They all change so much, and they’re so different one from another.

The use of vocals allowed us to go for so many different genres. We originally thought that we should find unity in the production of the songs and musical variety within the score. But in the end it’s the songs that are very varied and the vocal score that brings unity, creating a link between the dialogues and the songs’ vocals and the score choruses.

It was also the first time I wrote in Spanish. I love writing and singing in Spanish. Jacques told me: « We are not Mexican but we are like an Opera troop that’s creating a story that is set in Mexico. »

Jacques included me and Clément from the start. For 2 years we were just the 4 of us : Jacques, Thomas Bidegain, Clément and myself. During our work sessions, we were all staying in a little village in Dordogne. We wrote the songs together with the script. Scene by scene. In the morning, Jacques would talk to us about a scene. Like a writer writing a novel. My job was to look for a hook, for a phrase, an emotion, a word that would make a song. In the afternoon Clément and I would record in the studio and Jacques would then come and listen. In the evening, we would watch musicals and comment upon them. At first, Jacques wanted Emilia Pérez to be an Opera. Should we have singing wall to wall? How archetypical should we be? Little by little, it became obvious that the project should be a film. Jacques asked us to record an audio book with all songs and dialogues on which I put on different voices according to the characters. I was so much fun! This was very useful for Jacques, for the producers and the cast to project themselves in the story. Then we met the cast, recorded the playbacks. We were on the shooting and followed the editing. We composed the score, produced the songs, supervised the orchestration and ADR. It took us 4 years and a half of work. We were in relationship with the whole team. And we were in touch and brainstorming with the director from A to Z. I feel we did everything like artisans, by hand. Now we are proud to share it with the world. The actresses brought life to the songs. The public makes them come true.
The music for the film has won the hearts of many listeners and has certainly won many coveted awards and accolades. Was there any particular moment during the whole process that made you recognize that you were onto something truly special?

At the very start, at the very beginning, I first read a 20 pages treatment, before the script was even written. I immediately related and I thought : « We need that. Humanity, society needs that. » It’s a contemporary myth. I believe we humans need to be told stories and we need to be told new stories that talk about our times and our anxieties and our new fears and our new dreams.

I mean it became a movie, a musical, but at the core it’s a beautiful myth. And I think that’s the strength, the deepest strength of the movie. It’s a tale. It’s a tale of transformation. And this tale is made believable thanks to the songs because songs can make the unbelievable, believable. Jacques had that great intuition. In all tales, traditional tales, there are elements of songs or elements of singing, or musicality. Songs allowed the story to go for even more fantasmagoria and to go for emotions.

The heart believes anything that is moving, and the heart doesn’t ask if it’s true or not. The heart just beats and relates and empathizes. And I think that’s the movie’s great strength and I think today we really need stories and songs to enchant the world, even more when it’s desperate. We shouldn’t consider songs only like entertainment. Songs and music allow communion. When I’m sad or you know when the fires happened in LA, I sang. When we had that terrible attack in Paris at the Bataclan, I danced and I sang – and it’s not entertainment, it’s because it’s the only way for me to survive, and for humankind to survive. Let’s keep on singing, dancing and telling stories. That’s what the film “Blitz” shows too, you know: people in the UK during the bombings were dancing to cope and singing to keep on feeling safe and human. So, I think we really need to be told new stories, to create new traditional stories for the present and the future. And we need to enchant the world – we need songs and music.
How has working on Emilia Pérez influenced your own growth as a composer and songwriter? What are some takeaways that you’ll consider in your future songwriting?

Emilia Pérez has definitely influenced my own growth as a composer and writer. I think that growing as an artist is growing as a human being. It’s the growth of a soul.

Emilia Pérez taught me a lot about teamwork. First with my partner in life, as a team. I’m usually the boss of my own work, of my own songwriting. This time I worked with Clément together for Jacques.

Then I learned to tailor a song to a character and then to a singer, to an actress. And to learn how to communicate my musicality, to respect someone else’s way of acting, of singing, and to adapt to the person so that the person feels both directed and free.

And then it taught me to work with a team of so many people. So many people are involved, production, editor, music editor. It taught me how making a film worked. As I said before, we were involved the whole way: from the writing of the script, the recording, to the shooting, the score, and the ADR. So before, I had worked for some films, acted or sang or composed, but not so closely, and not for four and a half years. Five years now with the promotion of the movie.
It really taught me patience. I am a singer-songwriter, solo singer and I had to postpone my next album release and my tour. I spent so much time working on this movie. It really taught me patience because of course I wrote music and lyrics but I also went so deep into purely technical details. Also we had to wait, sometimes, for the editing, to be able to move on with the music. When you work on a musical film, you are completely dependent on all of the technical and artistic chain. That is something you’re not used to when you work « only » on music.
What made me grow also is working for fiction. It’s very cathartic. All songs are universal, but this time I felt it was a collective work for humanity. Like building a cathedral, along with other people. And that cathedral, maybe in a few generations, people won’t remember who built it exactly. But it will still be a cathedral and people will go in and gather and sing and think and pray and admire it and enjoy it and thank the ones that built the cathedral. I hope this doesn’t sound pretentious. I really mean it. I did it with humility and enthusiasm. And with all my heart.

Check out Camille’s Directory Page here.