“With 13 Oscar nominations and at least three probable wins, Jacques Audiard’s ‘Emilia Pérez’ hardly needs additional praise at this point,” said Tim Robey in The Telegraph. “That’s lucky, since most people would rather be caught dead than bestow any.”
The French director’s musical crime drama tells the story of Mexican cartel boss Emilia (played by Karla Sofía Gascón) who fakes death, then undergoes gender-transition surgery and campaigns for victims of the drug war. The film, set mostly in Mexico, is the most nominated foreign-language film in Oscars history, and Gascón is the first openly transgender actor to win an Oscar nomination. But the film has also been “roundly discredited from every angle you could imagine”.
‘Tour de force of disaster’
If it wins Best Picture, it would be “the lowest critic-scored movie to do so since ‘Crash'”, said Paul Tassi in Forbes. The film has become “nothing short of a meme”. And rightly so, said Jack Hamilton in Slate. Its 132 minutes “unfold like a glittering and garish tour de force of disaster, a relentless procession of terrible ideas, terribly executed”. In both content and form, the film is an “abomination”.
It’s also been deemed “wildly offensive”. Queer critics are “concerned if not completely baffled”, said Kyndall Cunningham in Vox. Even LGBTQ advocacy organisation GLAAD called the film “a step backward for trans representation”. Mexicans have denounced the “regressive and lazy” depiction of their country, and the film’s inauthenticity. None of the stars were born in Mexico while the film was shot mostly in Paris. Mexican screenwriter Héctor Guillén called it a “racist Eurocentric mockery”.
‘Ostensibly inclusive credentials’
This film is “objectively poor”, said The Economist. So why is Hollywood “besotted”? Firstly, money: Netflix has spent “tens of millions of dollars” on its awards campaign. Secondly, the Academy’s “liberal self-image”: the film’s “ostensibly inclusive credentials” no doubt contributed to its nominations.
With Donald Trump‘s administration “resuming the demonisation of Mexican and LGBTQ+ people”, perhaps the Academy intended to “hit back with its ‘Emilia Pérez’ love”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. All the criticism also risks “downplaying” Gascón’s hard work to “shape her character”, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. “But in the end, what is the point of rallying around a representation that doesn’t serve those it’s representing?” Hollywood “wants to be seen as a liberal haven” but “only money really talks”.