There is a certain obligation that many pieces of transgender media feel to explain the trans identity to a wider audience. We’re more than a decade removed from having trans characters in film and television that are more than just dead bodies for the likes of Law & Order: SVU or CSI, yet plenty of cisgender people know very little about our community. For trans artists and those seeking to include trans people in their own stories, the inherent need to hold the audience’s hand playing ‘trans 101’ can be extremely frustrating.

The film Emilia Perez spends very little of its time diving into the identity of its eponymous trans character (Karla Sofía Gascón), a Mexican cartel kingpin who enlists Rita (Zoe Saldana), an attorney, to help her undergo a steal gender transition. Emilia, previously known as Manitas, transitions in stealth under the dead of night in Thailand, a highly unrealistic proposition fundamentally rooted in decades-old preconceptions of trans people. After having every procedure under the sun in one fell swoop, Emilia misses her family, having shipped off her wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and kids to Switzerland to avoid retribution from rival gangs.

Inexplicably, she sends for them to join her at her Mexican estate, posing as her former identity’s aunt to a family who has precisely zero idea that their new benefactor is actually their father/husband. Director Jacques Audiard seems to operate under the utterly clownish impression that trans people shed our entire prior identities, fully integrating into the cis way of life after a weekend in Bangkok. Emilia Perez contains what is very likely the worst song ever written about gender dysphoria, guaranteed to make any trans person regret the life decisions that might cause people to associate themselves with this trainwreck.

It’s unclear why Emilia Perez is a musical. The songs are all terrible and add nothing to the experience beyond padding an excruciating 132-minute runtime. Audiard doesn’t know how to film musical numbers either. Somehow, against all odds, Gomez, a professional singer, sounds just as terrible as Saldana and Gascón, not that anyone could put lipstick on the lyrics that somehow made it into a professional film.

Saldana and Gascón’s chemistry provides some intrigue to the film’s anemic second half, which takes a four-year jump after Emilia’s gender confirmation procedures. Rita is more of the lead than Emilia, but Saldana doesn’t have much to work with for her character. Rita is unfulfilled at her job and upset at being a bachelorette in her forties. The fact that she supposedly became immensely rich after arranging Emilia’s surgeries is cast aside, for whatever reason.

Audiard’s gross incompetence squanders a brilliant premise. Trans people rarely get to play fun roles like drug kingpins. Emilia’s transformation from cartel overlord to nonprofit benefactor is poorly explained and inconsistent. Most trans people will tell you that gender-affirming care does not lead to a complete 180 in character and personality. If Audiard knows a single trans person other than Gascón, it doesn’t come across in his superficial narrative that cares little about its subject beyond her medical procedures. Judging solely by his film full of racist stereotypes, it’s unclear whether Audiard, a French native, knows any actual Mexican people either.

Cis people might be fooled by some of Audiard’s attempts at compelling drama. One of Emilia’s children notes that she smells like their father once did, aside from her off-putting perfume, another trans stereotype. A change in body odor is one of the most immediate effects of hormone replacement therapy. Somehow, this child, who never indicates that he sees a physical resemblance between Emilia and his father, picks up on what would be an unlikely medical anomaly, unless we’re to believe that Emilia keeps using the same deodorant.

Audiard’s pathetic depiction of trans issues belies Emilia Perez’s more glaring issues. This is a profoundly bad movie. The music is awful. The screenplay never dives deeper than its superficial surface. Trans people might be embarrassed that this film was made, but cis people won’t have a very good time either.