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Emilia Pérez: The most controversial film of the year?

By hola | Published February 27, 2025 | No Comments

Director Jacques Audiard’s film, “Emilia Pérez,” skyrocketed to success after its release last November. But after winning multiple Golden Globe awards and becoming one of the films with the most nominations in this year’s Oscars, could it be in danger of losing it all?

The melodramatic musical features the titular Emilia Pérez, played by Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón, a Mexican drug lord who undergoes gender reassignment surgery to become a woman after faking her death and exiting the cartel business. She books surgeons and hides her identity with the help of her best friend Rita, an underpaid, small-town lawyer. “Emilia Pérez” uniquely uses unprecedentedly bold musical numbers to explore the themes of transgender rebirth and redemption.

The film first earned recognition when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, receiving a standing ovation from the audience. After its Netflix release, it climbed to the top of the charts. It has won a total of 103 awards thus far. At Sunday’s Oscars ceremony, it will compete for 13 nominations, including Best Directing, Best International Feature Film and Best Picture.

Shortly after the film started winning awards, however, bitter criticism erupted online that called out the film as inauthentic to Mexican culture and insensitive to cartel-related violence.

When asked on the social media platform Snapchat how people felt about the film, Mexican American Kelsey Camacho responds, “They took a real issue that has been happening in Mexico for years and — instead of focusing on it — made it look like it didn’t matter.”

However, the film also has supporters like Olga Martínez, who defended it on social media, calling the criticism unnecessary. “I don’t understand why so much hate. It does reflect a social reality in Mexico. Maybe it is a different structure of cinema to say we have social terror, [but] we definitely have it,” Martínez posts on TikTok.

According to Red Lupa, an organization monitoring the forced disappearances of people in Mexico, more than 114,000 people have gone missing, with nearly half of all missing persons reported between 2018 and May 2024. Taking into account how serious this issue is, the film has faced backlash in both the United States and Mexico, with audience members believing that the film mocks such a sensitive topic.

Some of the most crucial but controversial moments deemed insulting to the Mexican community include the opening scene. The film begins with the lawyer Rita, played by Zoe Saldaña, writing an appeal for a client accused of murdering his wife. She then breaks into the first of many musical numbers emphasizing that violence is everywhere in Mexico.

From the very first scene, the viewer is faced with the question: If Rita truly hates the idea of violence and corruption, why does she work in the justice system? Throughout the rest of the film, Rita’s hypocrisy is central to her character. She goes as far as becoming best friends with a notorious ex-cartel leader, the titular Emilia Pérez.

Does the friendship between a “trusted” lawyer and an infamous ex-cartel leader seem comical? Is it comical that the two start an organization that locates missing people, even if some of those missing people were most likely killed by the members of the cartel Pérez herself ran?

Pérez starts out as Manitas, a notorious cartel boss in Mexico, who decides to “leave” that world behind after feeling empty in life. Alongside Rita, Emilia creates the organization La Lucesita to solve the systematic issue of missing people in Mexico, becoming a beacon of hope in the community. Pérez, in turn, becomes a savior to all.

Towards the end of the film, Emilia gets kidnapped by her ex-wife and her lover. They get into a car accident, and everyone dies, setting up the grand finale. The film ends with a parade of people mourning Emilia’s death and holding up a statue of her that symbolizes the saint she has become. The core issue the film purports to address becomes overshadowed by the character’s hypocrisy and musical numbers that feel offensive rather than consequential.

“Emilia Pérez” explores a trans trope. Gascón is the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards, but the film poorly represents the protagonist as a selfish, superficial, angry woman. “La Vaginoplastia,” a pivotal musical number, expresses how becoming a woman is easily fabricated. The film fails to represent the mental aspect of being a trans woman and instead focuses on the physical aspect.

Not only has the film faced criticism, but the crew and cast have contended with backlash in recent weeks. In contrast, Audiard has fueled more public anger with his comments about the controversy.

“Spanish is a language of modest countries, of developing countries, of the poor and migrants,” says Audiard in a recent interview with French media company Konbini, only to later walk back his comments in another interview.

The controversy only grew at the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico, where Audiard said he didn’t do much research on the country before filming, justifying, “What I had to understand, I already knew a little.” The lack of Mexican actors in leading roles has also irked the film’s critics.

To add more fuel to the fire, the 2020 and 2021 tweets by Gascón have resurfaced, showcasing her controversial views on George Floyd, Muslims and COVID-19 and causing an uproar, which may have derailed the film’s Oscar campaign. Gascón has since apologized on CNN Español for the posts and deactivated her X account.

The film, which has been compared to a feature length “Saturday Night Live” skit, has failed to win over the hearts of its internet critics. Thematically, this film was unsuccessful in many ways, and the songs, while catchy, are mediocre at best. Audiard’s inauthentic film is one to remember but not for any good reasons.

– Story by Consuelo Ramirez Vargas

– Copy edited by Kami Waller and Michelle Benitez

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