If you’re looking for something truly different, watch French filmmaker Jacques Audiard’s daring operatic drama “Emilia Pèrez,” recipient of 13 Oscar nominations including Best Film, Actress, Supporting Actress, and Adapted Screenplay.

Set against the brutality of Mexico City’s drug cartels, it’s the story of Juan ‘Manitas’ Del Monte, a swarthy, cigar-smoking, middle-aged kingpin – married with two young children – who yearns to be a woman.

To achieve that end, he hires Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldana), an overworked, overlooked criminal defense attorney, to discreetly arrange his highly risky gender reassignment surgery in Switzerland, eventually emerging as the titular Emilia Pèrez (Karla Sofía Gascón), leaving his angry yet adoring wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) to believe he’s dead.

Together, Emilia and Rita form a nonprofit charity with the goal of improving the lives of Latin American women whose worlds have been destroyed by narco violence. Among them is Epifania (Adriana Paz), who becomes Emilia’s paramour.

Complications arise when benevolent Emilia – now a justice-seeking philanthropist – demands that Rita arrange a reunion with Jessi and their children. Claiming to be the Del Monte children’s rich ‘auntie,’ doting Emilia tries to intimidate petulant Jessi, who has since reunited with her longtime lover, Gustavo Brun (Edgar Ramiriz).

Hefty, transgender Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón brings a sincere, melodramatic flair to a complex dual performance – involving transition, transformation and rebirth – while Zoe Saldana (“Avatar,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Lioness”) once again demonstrates her versatility.

Working with cinematographer Paul Guilhaume, writer/director Jacques Audiard notes that his libretto was inspired by a character in a chapter in Boris Razon’s 2018 novel “Ecoute” (“Listen”) about a ruthless, hyper-macho drug trafficker who asks a lawyer for logistical help to transition into a woman.

Composed by Clement Ducol and Camille Dalmais, the musical numbers are brief and bizarre, beginning with “El Alegato” (“The Plea”) to chanting surgery-based lyrics in a Bangkok clinic – referring to “mammaplasty,” “vaginoplasty” and “laryngoplasty”- and proceeding onto Selena Gomez’s pop ballad “Mi Camino” (“My Path”), while Zoe Saldana wraps up with “El Mal” (“The Evil”).

In Spanish with English subtitles, “Emilia Pèrez” is a unique, provocative, compassionate 8, streaming on Netflix.

Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Oscar- nominee “Nickel Boys,” a meditation on trauma, racism and memory, tells the story of two Black teenagers who meet at an abusive, segregated reformatory in rural southern Florida in the 1960s.

What makes this dramatization unusual is that it’s related from first-person perspectives. At first, the focus is on 16-year-old Elwood (Ethan Herisse), who is sent to Nickel Academy after accidentally hitching a ride in a stolen car that has been pulled over by the police.

Raised by his devoted grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), who works on the cleaning staff at a Tallahassee hotel, principled, well-mannered Elwood is an honor student, headed for advanced classes at a technical college. 

Vulnerable Ellwood is frightened and bewildered by his wrongful detention, subsequent incarceration and brutal beating by Mr. Spencer (Hamish Linklater), the sadistic supervisor, landing him in the Academy hospital.

Then the narrative is viewed through the eyes of Elwood’s new friend, Turner (Brandon Wilson) from Houston. After streetwise Turner tells Elwood how ‘incorrigible’ boys are shut in the ‘sweat box’ (a hot crawl space under a tar roof) and subsequently murdered with their mutilated bodies buried in unmarked graves, their reactions differ.

Relying on the lawyer hired by his grandmother to plead his case, inquisitive Elwood keeps a meticulous journal, firmly believing justice will prevail, while traumatized Turner insists that the only way for them to remain alive is to escape.

Working with co-writer Joslyn Barnes and cinematographer Jomo Fray, RaMell Ross often utilizes flash-forwards, decades later, indicating that the horrifying atrocities at Nickel will eventually be discovered – which is what happened at Florida’s notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, which was closed in 2011.

While Ross’s experimental subjectivity and observational cinematic technique are undoubtedly adventurous, the intertwining visionary points-of-view are also confusing, particularly when combined with the often-stilted dialogue. 

On the Granger Gauge, “Nickel Boys” is a symbolic, surreal yet skewed 7, available to buy/rent on Prime Video and soon streaming on MGM+.