It’s been a while since I have seen so much hatred for an Oscar contender. Everywhere I look, there are articles and posts being thrown up on social media begging the Academy Awards to reward any movie other than Emilia Pérez. I haven’t seen this much bile being thrown around since Brokeback Mountain was the front-runner at the 2005 Oscars. Having now seen the film, I can only suppose that some of this negativity stems from the fact that this film tackles issues like transgenderism and gender identity. Add into that mix a hefty dose of Hispanic discrimination and make the whole thing a musical, a genre a lot of people like to dump on, unless you happen to be Wicked, and you have a film that has become a social punching bag for people who like to hide behind their keyboards and preach hatred and intolerance of anyone and anything that is different from their view of how things should be.
It really is unfortunate that we live in a world where this kind of thinking is tolerated. Whether you agree with someone’s world view or not, that shouldn’t change your ability to see them as a fellow human being and let them live their own life, free from your scrutiny and judgment. It should also not be a factor in whether or not a film is good or bad, just whether it is for you or not. I’m done preaching for now. Now let’s look at this movie for what it is.
In 2018, Boris Razon wrote his novel Écoute. In that book is a character that inspired Jacques Audiard to pen an opera libretto entitled Emilia Pérez. That opera serves as the basis for the film of the same name and has been described as simultaneously beautiful and ugly. This is a deliberate choice made to emphasize the dual nature of life. There is always beauty and ugliness to it, no matter what package we wrap it in. This was the first time Audiard was writing a script alone, with some generous assistance from composer Clément Ducol and French singer Camille crafting the music alongside a Mexican translator. The final result has been polarizing, with it getting accolades at the Cannes Film Festival but a lot of negative reactions from the LGBTQ+ community as well as the vocal majority who feel the need to rail against those they don’t agree with.
Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) is a struggling attorney in Mexico City. After a particularly difficult case wraps up, she receives an anonymous phone call asking her if she wants to be rich. She takes the bait, agreeing to meet the person at a designated place and time. Upon arrival, though, a bag is thrown over her head, and she is whisked away to an undisclosed location where she is brought face-to-face with cartel leader Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón). Manitas wants to begin a new and authentic life by covertly undergoing gender-affirming surgery, officially ending her existing life, and sending her wife and children away thinking she has died. After some searching, Rita finds a doctor willing to perform the operation, and the arrangements are made. Rita is paid and disappears to London, thinking this whole saga is over for her.
Four years later, Rita is introduced to Emilia Pérez at a casual dinner out with friends. It isn’t long before she realizes that Emilia is Manitas, and her first thought is that Manitas wants to eliminate any loose strings attached to her old identity. But that is not what she wants. Emilia misses her children and wants Rita to arrange to bring them back to Mexico in the guise of moving in with a distant relative to Manitas. But doing so causes some complications as her wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), begins seeing Gustavo (Édgar Ramírez), a man she had previously had an affair with, and she soon wants to marry him and move out, taking the kids with her. While all of this is happening, Emilia has decided to use her connections with cartel leaders and other violent criminals, who are looking for some sort of forgiveness in this life and beyond, to find missing and killed people all over the country and bring closure to the families of the lost.
Audiard paints his film in broad brushstrokes. The results of that are that a community of people seeking recognition in film see this as not accurately representing their point of view. On top of that, it doesn’t represent Mexican culture very well, either. This is a French production filmed near Paris that is supposed to be representative of the Mexican people. This decision to forgo filming in Mexico at all was made by Audiard, and it handicaps the production. His decision to rely on archetypes instead of real characters further hinders the film. This film feels like a straight person’s idea of what it is like to be trans. While it is not impossible to accurately write about something you are not a part of and have no experience with, it does require you to do extensive research into the subject, maybe even bring in advisors with a lot of experience in the subject, but it feels like Audiard did none of these things and based it all on perceptions, many of which are not accurate at all.
What makes this so surprising is the casting of Karla Sofía Gascón. Karla is a trans actress and, as of this writing, is the only trans actress to ever be nominated for an Academy Award for their acting. It’s making precedence in a time when our government is trying to do the opposite. The problem isn’t that Karla was cast in this role but that this role is so poorly representative of what Karla herself represents. The trans community sees reaffirming surgery to be an awakening of their true self, not an ending of themselves and a birth of a new person the way Emilia sees it. This isn’t the death of Manitas and the birth of Emilia. Likewise, the idea of abandoning the family to go through the change is all wrong, too. I’m not from the LGBTQ+ community and I don’t claim to represent those who are, but I’d like to think they have better connections to their significant others, and to any children they might have, than to just ship them off to a foreign country and make them believe they had died.
The presentation of the various surgeries is ludicrous, too. There is a song that overplays this moment as Rita is gathering information from a hospital in Hong Kong about the procedures. This song, La Vaginoplastia, is legitimately cheesy and bad, sung out by doctors and nurses who throw out the names of the various surgeries while Rita responds back “yes, yes, yes!” Another song, where Manitas sings out about being both a man and a woman, comes across as forced and not genuine, like someone who doesn’t really know what it is like to be trans wrote the lyrics. The fault lies in the writers, not the performer who is doing an amazing job with the weak lyrics.
Zoe Saldaña is doing incredible work in a role that really doesn’t make sense in the context of the film. It stretched belief that someone like Manitas has to rely on a somewhat random stranger to find her a surgeon. This is the mulligan this film asks us to accept in order to have this story, and on that level, I can go with it, but not easily. Zoe’s acting goes a long way towards smoothing over this plot contrivance, though, and some of her best moments come during some particularly over-the-top musical numbers. When Emilia gets involved in finding missing people, killed by the cartels, she organizes a fundraiser that includes a lot of bad people. Zoe’s song, “El Mal,” reflects her reaction to this bit of hypocrisy and it does so with flair, raunchiness, and just pure raw emotion. This song is up for an Academy Award, along with “Mi Camino,” and is a contributing factor in Zoe’s own nomination in the supporting actress category.
Even though I feel like this is a missed opportunity to represent the trans community in the movies, I still cannot dislike this film. The story borrows a lot from Mrs. Doubtfire, but it does resonate with me on that level. I have three kids of my own and would be unable to send them away forever, so I understood the drive Emilia had to not only bring them back but then to go on the offensive when it became clear the wife was going to take them away again. I liked all of this stuff, but it wasn’t quite enough to elevate this film overall into my favorite films of the year. It’s simply not enough to get me to feel something for the characters; I have to be fully invested, and this film kept me just a little too far at arm’s length to fully care. The ending only further cemented the distance I was feeling.
Emilia Pérez could have been so much better than it ended up being. I can understand some of the negative responses it is getting, especially from the LGBTQ+ community who, generally, were disappointed in it. What I cannot understand, or condone, is disliking it simply because it has a trans character in it and explores that whole lifestyle. Gay or straight; trans, nonbinary, lesbian; if the story is compelling and the emotions are real, then it deserves to be seen and judged on that level. It’ll be very interesting, this March, to see how this will play out come Oscar night. Will the Academy reward it with the top prize for its well meaning, if misdirected, message about the trans community or will they shy away from it the way they did with Brokeback Mountain.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Jacques Audiard and Pascal Caucheteux
Best International Feature Film: France
Best Director: Jacques Audiard
Best Actress: Karla Sofía Gascón
Best Supporting Actress: Zoe Saldaña (won)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Jacques Audiard, in collaboration with Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius, and Nicolas Livecchi
Best Film Editing: Juliette Welfling
Best Sound: Erwan Kerzanet, Aymeric Devoldère, Maxence Dussère, Cyril Holtz, and Niels Barletta
Best Cinematography: Paul Guilhaume
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Julia Floch Carbonel, Emmanuel Janvier, Jean-Christophe Spadaccini, and Romain Marietti
Best Original Score: Clément Ducol
Best Original Song: “El Mal” by Clément Ducol, Camille, and Jacque Audiard (won)
Best Original Song: “Mi Camino” by Clément Ducol and Camille
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Release Date: August 21, 2024
Running Time: 132 minutes
Rated R
Starring: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gasgón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Mark Ivanir, and Édgar Ramírez
Directed by: Jacques Audiard
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