With 13 Oscar nominations this year, “Emilia Pérez” is easily one of the most talked-about films of the award season, boasting major Hollywood star power in lead actresses Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez, and earning an 11-minute standing ovation at its 2024 Cannes Film Festival premier. The story of a Mexican narco-kingpin who undergoes gender-reassignment surgery and escapes cartel life, this Spanish-language musical has earned accolades from cinephiles, and garnered its share of controversy — not least due to incendiary and offensive past social media posts by star Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays the titular protagonist.
Beyond Gascón’s online polemics, however, “Emilia Pérez” has become a cultural flashpoint thanks to its subject material and the broader political climate into which the film has been released.
‘Profoundly retrograde’ or ‘realistic and relatable’?
Much of the substantive controversy surrounding “Emilia Pérez” has centered on the film’s portrayal of trans-ness. It seemed as if writer-director Jacques Audiard was “painting trans women as liars,” and people who “can’t tell the truth” and “don’t know who they are,” said critic Reanna Cruz on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. Citing lines from one of the film’s musical numbers, the notion that “what individual people choose to do with their bodies redounds to ‘societies’ and ‘souls'” is the “driving logic behind nearly every brand of bigotry under the sun, and transphobia especially,” Jack Hamilton said at Slate. “What are we really doing here?” The movie is a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman,” and a “step backward for trans representation,” said GLAAD.
Criticism over the film’s trans subject matter has not been universal within the trans community. “Emilia Pérez” offers the sort of “complex, flawed trans characters and narratives” that “trans film lovers and critics have been begging to see,” said Mey Rude at Out. “As a Mexican-American trans lesbian, I find Emilia is one of the most realistic and relatable trans characters I’ve ever seen in a movie.” The film is a “compelling depiction of a morally complex character” which “puts trans issues at front and center,” said Julie River at Out Front Magazine.
Still, said Clarisse Loughrey at Independent, Gascón is the “first out trans actor to be nominated for an Oscar” — a milestone which makes it “important that any critique of ‘Emilia Pérez’ recognizes her work and her contribution.” At the same time, “what is the point of rallying around a representation that doesn’t serve those it’s representing?”
A ‘trivialization’ of Mexico?
The other main vector of criticism against “Emilia Pérez” is the film’s portrayal of Mexico, depicted as an “inescapably violent and miserable place,” said Kyndall Cunningham at Vox. Despite being a “a supposedly unconventional tale,” the film fails to “challenge any of the stereotypical narratives about the drug trade that are already rampant in popular Western media and politics.” The film turns Mexico’s “biggest security crisis into a musical where the protagonist is one of the perpetrators,” María Meléndez said at Mexico News Daily. It’s a “trivialization” that is “deeply painful.”
The film succeeds in creating a “sensationalist and deeply retrograde depiction” of Mexico as a “violence-ridden failed state,” made particularly awkward by “Audiard’s seeming disinterest in anything resembling cultural authenticity,” said Slate’s Hamilton. Moreover, Mexico has for years been the “second most deadly place in the world for transgender women,” said Berenice Bautista at The Associated Press — a “reality not reflected in the film.”
“I don’t know if ‘Emilia Pérez’ is a good reflection of Mexican culture,” admitted director Audiard at a recent screening of the film. “Because we shot the whole thing in Paris in a studio.” But Mexico City native Adriana Paz, who costars in the film, has come to its defense. “I’ve heard people saying it’s offensive to Mexico,” Paz said at Indie Wire. “I really want to know why, because I didn’t feel that way.”