Zoe Saldana in “Emilia Pérez” (2024)

This year’s film awards season is already facing backlash and the Oscars haven’t even been awarded yet. The Golden Globes and the Oscars alike have been filled with questionable snubs and nominations. In particular, the Oscar nominations have drawn a great deal of criticism, as film fans have gathered to raise complaints about the lack of nominations for some films, such as “Dune: Part Two” and “Challengers,” and the overwhelming number of nominations for others. Rising above all of it though, is one baffling enigma of a film: the 2024 musical crime drama “Emilia Pérez.”

“Emilia Pérez” follows a few female characters in modern-day Mexico, but the main focus of the film is the titular Emilia Pérez. In the film Emilia, played by Karla Sofía Gascón, is a cartel leader who enlists the help of a lawyer named Rita, played by Zoe Saldaña, to help her organize her gender transition and start a new life as a woman.

This transition to a “new life” entails faking her death, assuming an entirely new identity where the crimes of her past cannot catch up to her, and even her wife and young children think she is dead. The film also discusses Mexico’s missing persons humanitarian crisis, and Emilia becomes an activist who helps people get answers or justice for their vanished loved ones.

So what is the controversy surrounding “Emilia Pérez?”

To start, the film racked up a total of 13 nominations at this year’s Oscars. That is the most nominations for a film this year, and the most in Oscars’ history for a non-English language film. It is tied with a few other films for the second most Oscar nominations ever . In addition to this, it received 11 nominations at this year’s Golden Globes, and received four Golden Globe wins, including Best Picture – Musical or Comedy.

These nominations and wins are controversial because the film has been widely panned by critics and audiences, both for its overall quality and for its poor handling of its subject matter.

“Emilia Pérez,” a film about a trans Mexican cartel leader, was written and directed by Jacques Audiard, a cisgender, white, French man. Audiard seemingly didn’t do the amount of research that is necessary to cover these heavy topics from communities that he is not a part of.

Critics in the US and Europe were generally positive to the film upon its release, but critics and audiences in Mexico detested the film, claiming that its depiction of Mexico and Mexican social issues were ignorant, harmful, and poorly researched. Many have claimed that the film sensationalized and mishandled Mexico’s missing persons’ crisis.

In a quote from the BBC, Audiard said, “I went to Mexico, and we scouted there during the casting process as well, maybe two, three times and something wasn’t working. And I realised that the images I had in my mind of what [the film] would look like just didn’t match the reality of the streets of Mexico. It was just too pedestrian, too real. I had a much more stylised vision in my mind.”

Due to real Mexico not living up to the stylised version that existed in Audiard’s head, he moved the entire production to studios outside of Paris, where he built sets recreating Mexican streets to better fit his vision and to more easily choreograph. Only a few days were spent filming external shots in Mexico.

Additionally, very few Mexican people were involved in the production of “Emilia Pérez”. Out of the four main characters, only one is played by a Mexican actress, Adriana Paz. Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays Emilia, is Spanish, from a suburb of Madrid. Audiard himself doesn’t speak any Spanish, despite the vast majority of the film being spoken in Spanish.

“Emilia Pérez” is a baffling movie. Critics and audiences of the movie have slammed almost every aspect of the production. Denouncers of the movie cite its musical numbers in particular. In a review on Slate, Jack Hamilton writes, “The film has no unifying musical aesthetic to speak of: Nearly every song feels like a phoned-in mashup of cliches pilfered from the most banal corners of pop, rock, and hip-hop.”

Each musical number is shot with erratic lighting and camera work to accompany the odd chanting, whisper-singing, and any attempt to come across as unique or innovative completely falls flat. Not to mention it’s shockingly nonsensical lyrics, including the now-infamous lyric “From penis to vaginaaaa” from the original song “La Vaginoplastia,” which has made the rounds on social media.

I would argue that the most glaring issue with “Emilia Pérez” is Emilia Perez herself. The film’s handling of its titular character and the story surrounding her transition was clearly poorly researched and was entirely mishandled. Many aspects of the movie surrounding Emilia’s trans identity are either ignorant or just blatantly wrong. For example, as ​​Fran Tirado wrote for Them, it is implied that one of the reasons that Emilia wanted to transition was that it would allow her to go into hiding and escape her crimes.

For the first forty minutes of the film, the characters never refer to Emilia as a woman, despite her already having directly stated her gender identity. They only start referring to her as a woman once she has had all of her surgeries and is living under an entirely new identity. There is a line in one of the film’s musical numbers where Emilia refers to herself as “half male / half female.” The movie is filled with degrading and harmful tropes about trans women, and treats Emilia and her transness as a spectacle to be ogled at. Organizations such as Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) have stated that the film is a step back for transgender representation. Fran Tarido from Them said that the film’s premise “is an idea of transness so completely from the cisgender imagination.”

So, why has “Emilia Pérez” already received so many accolades? Many high-profile critics, filmmakers, and actors have come out in defense of the film and Jacques Audiard, such as Guillermo del Toro, who called Audiard “One of the most amazing filmmakers alive.” Perhaps organizations such as The Academy of Motion Pictures are giving it so much praise and attention because they believe that the film handles its topics in an impactful and meaningful way, and that giving the film attention will give them the appearance of supporting progressive films.

They are lavishing praise on a film that is filled with harmful stereotypes and dangerous portrayals of all of the communities involved. My hope for Oscars night this year is that films other than “Emilia Pérez” get their moment to shine. I will not be watching.