“Emilia Pérez” is shaping up to be the most controversial movie of awards season. Written and directed by the French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, the film won the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and was named best comedy or musical at this year’s Golden Globes. It will likely receive several Academy Award nominations next week, including Best Picture (it is already shortlisted in the Best International Feature category).
However, the film is also wildly divisive, facing criticism for its portrayal of Mexico and its handling of transgender issues. Viewer responses range from calling the film powerful and inspirational to dismissing it as cartoonish and offensive. Regardless of where you fall, the award show run of “Emilia Pérez” raises vital questions about representation in popular media and our engagement with stories about marginalized groups.
The film opens with disillusioned Mexican lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) receiving a lucrative, but unusual, offer. A notorious drug kingpin, “Manitas” (Karla Sofía Gascón), wants her help in secretly undergoing surgery to become a woman. After faking her death, Manitas begins a new life as Emilia Pérez. But Emilia feels guilt for leaving her sons. Soliciting the help of Rita, she poses as her former self’s wealthy cousin and invites her “widow,” Jessi (Selena Gomez), and young sons—all unaware of the transition—to live with her. Along the way, she and Rita also start a nonprofit that identifies the bodies of people “disappeared” by cartels, in order to give their families closure.
Did I mention that it’s a musical?
Adapted from an opera libretto written by Audiard, with songs composed by French musicians Clément Ducol and Camille, “Emilia Pérez” is about as audacious and over-the-top as you can imagine. In one number, Rita dances sinuously through a banquet hall filled with the wealthy and corrupt, hissing lyrics. In another, surgeons and bandaged patients twirl around a clinic singing about different forms of gender-related surgery (“Vaginoplasty!” “Penoplasty!”). Speaking with Hero magazine, Audiard said that the subject matter is so weighty that a straightforward story would end up being “this very serious documentary.” The film’s exaggerated style is meant to shock audiences into lowering their guard so that the story can connect “in a more iconoclastic, and more direct, way,” he said.
I admit that I enjoyed “Emilia Pérez” more than most people I know. It is a story about sin and redemption; I am, as you might imagine, a sucker for those. The film works best as Emilia tries to make amends for her past crimes. “I want a new soul,” she sings to Rita, pre-transition. Gascón plays her regret and vulnerability beautifully, the human counterpoint to the beatific imagery that springs up around her due to her good work (a banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe hangs beside her desk and later Emilia’s image is carried above a procession like a saint).
For Emilia, transitioning is salvation: from the life-crushing agony of gender dysphoria but also from the erosion of her spirit. Gascón and Saldaña’s performances are extraordinary, anchoring the film’s more overblown moments with emotional power and authenticity. (I think Gomez is good as well, although that’s not the critical consensus). The film is broad and often clumsy, but it also seems motivated by a genuine sense of compassion. Its willingness to take big swings is laudable even if the results are hit-or-miss.
Still, “Emilia Pérez” is undoubtedly a flawed film. Its tonal shifts are dramatic enough to give you whiplash: So much of the film is deadly serious, but there is also a major plot element that is, unavoidably, reminiscent of “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Sometimes the songs lift the story into transcendence but more often the film tips over into the ridiculous. On the level of filmmaking, Audiard’s direction and Damien Jalet’s choreography are electric, but both are often muddled by poor lighting.
While the film takes place primarily in Mexico, it was shot in France. Adriana Paz, who plays Elena’s lover Epifanía (again: subtlety is not this film’s strong suit), is the only Mexican actor in the cast. Many Mexican viewers have criticized the film, alleging that it perpetuates stereotypes and trivializes the country’s epidemic of violence. Rodrigo Prieto, a famed Mexican cinematographer who frequently collaborates with Martin Scorsese, called the film “completely inauthentic” (on the other hand, the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro praised the film). Meanwhile, GLAAD called it “profoundly retrograde” in its handling of trans issues, and the trans writer Amelia Hansford described the film as “so alienated from the process of transitioning as a trans woman—and yet blurts falsehoods out with such bold, intense conviction.” Trans critics, including Hansford, took issue with the film’s presentation of gender transition as a means for Emilia to be absolved—and, more cynically, escape responsibility.
Critics have also noted that major awards bodies have not given comparable attention to trans films made by trans filmmakers, including Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow” (my favorite film of the year). For some, the film’s success conjures the specters of “Crash” (2004) and “Green Book” (2018): Best Picture winners whose victories (combined with the historic underrepresentation of people of color among Oscar honorees) have become emblematic of the film establishment’s preference for stories told about marginalized groups rather than by them.
This raises important questions about what obligations a storyteller takes on when they attempt to tell the story of a marginalized population. I don’t believe that they must always portray members of that group in a positive light or always achieve total factual accuracy. There is room for humor, moral complexity and stylistic audacity. But it’s the storyteller’s responsibility to represent their subjects authentically in their work. A recent example that comes to mind is Martin Scorsese’s work with the Osage Nation in making “Killers of the Flower Moon” (2023).
“Emilia Pérez” leaves me wondering how you define success for such a film. Going by the metric of awards success, it’s a juggernaut. As a cinematic experience I found it both beautiful and baffling, but never boring. But the backlash from Mexican and trans critics—the people who, ostensibly, the film is trying to uplift—is worth reflecting on. If a film about a population is praised, primarily, by people not within that population, has it achieved its goals? Is it the story that matters more, or who tells it?
