Emilia Pérez is a Spanish-language musical crime film about a Mexican notorious and ruthless cartel boss who discreetly undergoes gender affirmation surgery and fakes her death, leaving behind a wife, two children, and a life of crime. After recovering, she starts fresh as Emilia Pérez, and tries to live a moral life by founding a charity to help victims of the cartel. Despite this promising premise, the film offers little more than a sloppy characterization of a trans woman and a surface level depiction of the issues that it attempts to tackle.
Initially, the film received critical acclaim upon its release, from receiving a standing ovation at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival to the various awards and nominations it has received from the Golden Globes and Academy Awards.
Slowly but surely, as the buzz about the film grew, and as it reached more audiences, the reaction began to shift online. Audiences criticized the film’s depiction of Mexico from improperly representing the Mexican judicial system to awkwardly written Spanish lyrics. Audiences also criticized the film’s depiction of transness, showcasing a protagonist with an evil, violent, inner-masculine side that comes out when she’s angry. There is an entire song that her children sing about how Emilia smells like their father, the filmmakers seemingly unaware that Emilia, having taken hormones for years, would smell completely different. All of these criticisms could have easily been avoided with the smallest amount of research, which the director, Jacques Audiard openly confessed to doing none of, stating, “No, I didn’t study much. I kinda already knew what I had to understand.” As a result, the missed details expose Emilia Pérez for its laziness and insincere handling of sensitive issues. But the criticism didn’t end there; everything from its performances to its direction to its musical numbers began to receive mockery.
In mid-January, the increasingly negative public perception of the film came to my attention when I came across a short clip on Instagram featuring the film’s “Vaginoplasty” sequence where Emilia’s lawyer meets with a doctor to discuss gender affirming surgery. The song features these inspired lyrics:
Hello, very nice to meet you
I’d like to know about sex change operation
I see, I see, I see
Man to woman or woman to man?
Man to woman
From penis
to vagina
The song continues with a doctor listing different gender affirmation operations while transgender patients undergo and recover from surgery and gawk at the camera.
I didn’t know what was more shocking about “Vaginoplasty”: the silly lyrics or the unpleasant melody. The instrumentation is ugly, the singing is unimpressive, and the lyrics are blunt and graceless. I could hardly believe this was a real scene in Emilia Pérez, so I decided to see it for myself.
Two hours and 10 minutes later, my confusion was even stronger. During the first 30 minutes, I was admittedly invested. The movie starts off from the perspective of Emilia’s lawyer, Rita, and learning about Emilia from this perspective adds a lot of mystery. It is easy to be sympathetic when she opens up about her gender dysphoria, but the film doesn’t let the audience forget she is still a dangerous person. When Rita is taking too long to find a doctor to perform the operations, Emilia has henchmen break into her apartment, threatening to kill her if she doesn’t hurry up. They allow Emilia to be complex and human. After she transitions, though, the film acts as though she has instantly been redeemed of any criticism, for both her past and present.
As Emilia attempts to lead a new and moral life, I waited for the consequences of her past to catch up with her. They don’t. Instead, Emilia invites it all back herself. After four years, she starts to miss her children, so she pretends to be a long-lost cousin and orders her former wife and kids to move in with her. Surely, upon seeing how her “death” affected her wife and children, and after continuing to lie about her identity, Emilia will reflect or feel guilt over the trauma she’s been putting them through, right? No, instead, Emilia is just happy to have them around, wanting them to be as dependent on her as possible.
Later on, when Emilia starts a nonprofit to help identify the bodies of cartel victims, I waited once again for her to reflect on her past as a vicious cartel boss. But she’s not interested in reflecting, and neither is the movie. The nonprofit is revealed to be funded by corrupt and dangerous donors, and though initially this hypocrisy is called out, Emilia doesn’t care, and the film never brings it up again. Emilia never acts remorseful, nor is she held accountable for her actions. Yet the movie’s finale presents her as a saint-like figure.
The problems don’t end there. Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoe Saldaña give decent performances, but the same cannot be said of Selena Gomez, who plays Emilia’s wife. At her best, she’s fine; at her worst, she appears like she doesn’t understand the words coming out of her mouth.
While “Vaginoplasty” is by far the silliest and craziest musical number of the film, most of the songs suffer from underwhelming and occasionally awful vocal performances.
In spite of all this, Emilia Pérez has already won four awards at the Golden Globes, including for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and it has received 11 nominations at the Academy Awards. I imagine that its various award wins and nominations will not be looked back at fondly.
So yes, Emilia Pérez is as bad as they say. The movie is plagued by a lack of authenticity and it pretty much fails on every level: as a musical, a drama, and as an entertaining viewing experience.
The Queerest 