Emilia Pérez

No movie made more headway during the 2024 Oscars than the Spanish-language French musical drama, Emilia Pérez, but it wasn’t for positive reasons. Currently seen as one of the biggest examples of Hollywood’s tone-deaf attitude towards certain topics, the story of a Mexican cartel leader transitioning into a women to get a restart on life did well with critics and was praised by the industry enough to earn 13 Oscar nominations (making it the most nominated non-English-language film of the show’s entire lifespan), but was brutalized by the general public for its terrible writing, dumb characters, arrogant delivery, and useless song numbers, and heavily criticized by the communities the film was supposed to represent, that being the Mexican community and the trans community. With controversies so vast and all-consuming that winning any Oscars would’ve only made things worse (it thankfully only took home two), Emilia Pérez is an iconic film for all the wrong reasons.

Set in Mexico City, a struggling lawyer named Rita (played by Zoe Saldaña) coasts through life by begrudgingly getting corrupt people off the hook for their crimes, and this eventually gets the attention of cartel kingpin, Juan ‘’Manitas’’ Del Monte, who asks Rita to help them undergo gender reaffirming surgery in order to start a new life as a woman in exchange for an exorbitant sum of cash. After securing surgeons for the operation and relocating Manitas’ wife, Jessi (played by Selena Gomez) and two children to Switzerland, Manitas fakes their death and starts living their new life as Emilia Pérez (played by Karla Sofía Gascón). Four years later, Rita is approached by Emilia who asks her to arrange for Jessi to stay with her under the guise of being a distant cousin of Manitas because she misses her kids. While Jessi is suspicious of this never-before-mentioned relative, she’s pleased to return to Mexico as she’s able to reunite with a past lover, which spurns a lot of complicated feelings within Emilia, who enjoys being back in her children’s lives (even while under a different identity) and is trying to make amends for her past misdeeds by creating a non-for-profit organization with Rita dedicated to identifying the bodies of cartel victims. As the facade of this new life starts to unravel and Emilia becomes more and more like her original identity, judgement day seems to have finally come for the former cartel kingpin.

The most disappointing aspect of Emilia Pérez is that it isn’t ridiculously awful, but just generically bad with occasional spouts of ludicrous construction. The flaws with this movie are very obvious down to the ill-fitting direction, unengaging characters, ugly visuals, terribly written song numbers, and an overall feeling of inauthenticity, but for what has been described as ‘’one of the worst movies ever made’’, it’s largely just dull, forgettable, overall tame, stereotypical, indicative of an outdated Hollywood preference, and distractingly passé in a way that can’t be enjoyably awful.

With an idea that was loosely based on a character featured in the 2018 novel, Écoute, acclaimed French filmmaker Jacques Audiard had originally envisioned the story as a four-act opera libretto, yet eventually transitioned it into a film even though you can still clearly feel aspects of its past identity (which is pretty ironic given the film’s subject matter). While the constant singing is the most obvious connection, the manner in which the music and even the dialogue is written and paced has more of a stage quality than a traditional movie musical, and yet, some of the best qualities of an opera like the bombastic scale, powerful vocal performances, and emotionally grand storytelling are entirely absent, and that’s only piercing the skin of this movie’s flaws. While the initial hook of a cartel kingpin being forced to deal with their past mistakes even after trying to escape it by transitioning genders could be interesting, the delivery should be self-aware enough that such an elaborate course of events will come with a bit of campy irony, but it is so desperate to come across as serious and ‘’important’’ that any sense of fun or personality is entirely absent. The script written by Audiard (with some assistance from Thomas Bigedain, Léa Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi) feels very scattered and doesn’t do a good job diving into any of its introduced plot points, but the directing is where things go totally off the rails and veer into harmful territories.

Emilia Pérez was trashed by general audiences and did so poorly at the box office that it couldn’t even top its budget of $25 million, and a lot of that hatred was spurned from its stereotypical and even derogatory stance on Mexico and transgender folk, the communities this film was supposedly trying to represent. A lot of this comes from lack of tact and even understanding, with Audiard actively stating in interviews that he didn’t research the country and instead made the film on his own limited knowledge, putting everything he and his entirely French crew into contention, especially since the portrayal is extremely dirty, corrupt and full of crime. It rings very hollow since no Mexicans were involved (even in casting) and considering the community has loudly proclaimed its hatred for this film (to the point that trans Mexican content creator, Camila Aurora González, released a short film parodying the movie titled Johanne Sacreblu featuring nothing but French stereotypes), that stain can’t be easily washed out. Even without these controversy, the film is just poorly delivered, failing to engage with its story or characters, offering a musical where all the songs add nothing and are terribly written and visualized, and delivering a story that could’ve been intriguing with proper handling, but has such pompous dramatism and unfiltered grit that it leads to a miserably immovable viewing experience.

The casting was also criticized for not hiring any Mexican actresses for any major roles (Saldaña is of Dominican-Republic/Puerto Rican descent and Gascón is Spanish), but this issue can be slightly dampened if the acting is good enough to make their casting feel legitimate, and to its very minimal credit, the acting is good amongst this very small cast. While it is upsetting that only one Mexican actress is featured in the whole film, both Saldaña and Gascón are doing everything they can to survive what is otherwise very bland dialogue and seemingly unhelpful direction, and their success at the Oscars shows that they are capable of doing so (Gascón was the first out trans women to be nominated for Best Actress, and Saldaña won for Best Supporting Actress). Sadly, their characters are not very interesting despite the clear potential, and the fact that the movie juggles both between leading and supporting at random means neither really has enough time to get delved into.

Rita is irritatingly basic, only feeling salvaged by Saldaña’s strong delivery, and because it’s a role that gets increasingly less interesting the longer the film continues, that mixed with the fact that every character is incredibly unlikeable makes it hard to find anyone to root for, with the shallow scripting preventing any sense of depth being added to muddy up their morality. While Saldaña’s performance is grounded enough to follow, it’s also predictable enough that it’s not fascinating to see unfold, which is where Gascón comes in and proves to be the only truly intriguing actress in the movie. While the controversies surrounding some of her offensive tweets in the past (which she did apologize for) got so bad that she was actively disowned by Audiard, removed from the film’s posters, and wasn’t invited to any events aside from the Oscars, her performance as the supposedly main character is the most interesting, as trying to figure out what’s going on in this very troubled person’s head, is the most engaged the film ever feels, and despite the character being written very blandly and even harmfully (they do treat being trans as simple as ‘’one side good, one side evil’’), Gascón makes the most of it.

The rest of the cast aren’t anything special and also feel very bare-bones. Selena Gomez was heavily criticized for her Spanish-speaking being notable awful (which is a little cruel and personal, but not technically wrong) but to further pour salt in the wound, nothing about her character really stands out or even feels like it needed a celebrity like her to portray her (the character barely even sings, it’s kind of ridiculous). The character is also incredibly stupid for not picking up sooner who Emilia truly is (which was another easily mockable element the internet ate up), and this is only as bothersome as it is because of how dramatic and heavy it’s presenting the premise, as with a more solid sense of humor and flexible tone (at least in an organized sense), the stakes could’ve been a felt more, the drama could’ve been elevated, and the characters may have been more endearing. No one else in the cast feels like a relevant character aside from Adriana Paz as Emilia’s love interest (also the ONLY Mexican actor in the entire production), but even then, she and the remaining actors are either just tools for the story or props to fill more space during the song sequences.

Considering Netflix acquired the distribution rights for the film after its premier, and spent a total of $50 million dollars on its Oscar campaigning, that mixed with the fact that the industry is obsessed with musicals, makes it come as no surprise that the Academy adored it as much as they did, but the song numbers are terribly done and bring nothing to the picture. There’s an occasional dumb lyric and some of the notes feel overly manufactured (probably because Gascón had her voice altered with AI to reach the notes), but the numbers just don’t leave any sort of impression, which for a musical and especially an opera, is really embarrassing.

There are so many featured throughout that they can’t be ignored, the dramatic presentation and gritty environment means that they’re never allowed to go all-out (which limits the spectacle) yet are also exaggerated enough to feel out of place, and while the singing is done okay and some of melodies are fine, the lyrics written by French singer, Camille (who wrote the songs alongside the film’s composer, Clément Ducol) are pretty bad, probably because they were written in the language not familiar to either songwriter. Any song spaces out a situation that could’ve been voiced in a single line, the staging is extremely underwhelming and barely has any flair, the camera work by Paul Guilhaume is too tight and invasive in a bad way, even the lighting is sweaty and ugly looking, the film’s overall aesthetic is just unpleasant.

Emilia Pérez should’ve championed people from Mexico, the trans community, women from all different cultures and upbringings, and any person in an impoverished or dangerous location, but because of its rotten portrayal and callous delivery, it has become just as harmful as any of their usual bullies. It doesn’t feel like this movie intended to insult, and it seems clear that the people involved do know how to make a movie, it just focused on a very important topic without taking the time to portray said topic authentically, and it really bit them in the backside. While the performances are good (mainly from Saldaña and Gascón) and the movie is so lacking in interest that it’s going to leave your memory the day after a watch, the unlikeable characters, overly serious storytelling, laughable script, pointless song sequences, and very tasteless direction leaves this film feeling confused on what it’s supposed to be.