Leading this year’s Oscar contenders by the sheer number of nominations, the musical comedy Emilia Pérez is eliciting criticism in addition to critical acclaim for its portrayal of transgender people and Mexican culture. The film won the best musical/comedy at the recent Golden Globes, setting it up as a strong Academy Awards contender.
The film garnered 13 Oscar nominations when they were announced January 23. The Academy Awards will be broadcast Sunday, March 2, on ABC and hosted by comedian and former TV late night host Conan O’Brien.
Even before the Netflix-distributed film by French director-writer Jacques Audiard started getting awards chatter, people expressed their issues with the movie. That has only heightened with the current buzz.
“What I saw just throughout is really the axes people have to the entertainment industry and in this case, obviously, Netflix,” Bamby Salcedo, a trans woman who is founder of the TransLatin@ Coalition in Los Angeles, said during a recent phone interview. “There’s this French writer who doesn’t even understand the culture of Mexico and wrote a movie – mind you, a fiction, but it really contributes to the stereotypes of Mexican people.”
Audiard’s film is about the leader of a drug cartel (Karla Sofía Gascón) who with the help of an attorney (Zoe Saldaña) disappears so that she can undergo a gender transition. Gascón became the first transgender actress to be nominated for the best actress Oscar.
Gascón told NPR she brought her own experience to the role.
“Had I gotten this role about 20 years ago, I don’t think that [I] would have been able to give it the same depth that I’m giving it now at 52,” she said.
The film won four awards at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards on January 5 – besting the box office hit Wicked in the Best Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy category. During her speech at the Golden Globes, Gascón used the film’s triumph as an opportunity to rally on behalf of the trans community.
Wearing a yellow-orange dress, she said, “I chose these colors – the Buddhist colors – tonight because I have a message for you: The light always wins over darkness.” She continued, “Say, ‘I am who I am, not who you want.’”
But regarding the film, Salcedo said that “the truth is even the story is not necessarily the story of many of us who are trans.”
“Many of us don’t have a lot of money to have surgeries and be completely transformed,” Salcedo said.
GLAAD blasted the film, too. The LGBTQ media organization called it a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” and a “step backward for trans representation” shortly after it started streaming in November.
Drew Burnett Gregory, a trans woman, stated in an online film review, “Whether made by us or about us, I want more trans stories that are audacious, ambitious, and new. The problem with Emilia Pérez is that while it’s new in some ways it’s very, very tired in others. The film hits just about every trans trope you can imagine.”
Gregory said that these tropes were “Trans woman killer,” “Tragic trans woman,” “Trans woman abandons her wife and children to transition,” “Transition treated as a death, “Deadnaming and misgendering at pivotal moments,” and “Trans woman described as half male/half female.”
Continued Gregory, “I’m not offended by anything on that list. It’s not about offense or something being not allowed. It’s that it’s boring. … This shallow understanding of trans people can’t still be interesting to cis people. How many times do cis people have to learn about us before a portrayal like this one rings as false to them as it does to me?”
During a piece about the film on NPR, Reanna Cruz, who is also trans, said, “The movie failed in multiple ways, I think in large ways too. I thought it was stereotyping Mexicans. I thought it was stereotyping trans women.”
Cruz added, “The entire time I was watching it I had a really weird feeling in my stomach because to me it seemed like the filmmaker was painting trans women as liars. Liars and people that can’t tell the truth and they don’t know who they are. And the songs kind of lean into that. Where half of the songs you have Emilia singing ‘Who am I?’ or talking about ‘I was a he and now I’m a she.’”
When asked about the criticism that the film didn’t properly portray the culture of Mexico, Salcedo told the B.A.R. that, “Mexico is much more than just the cartels and the drugs and all of that, right?”
“There’s a procession that happens after Emilia passed away, and that’s something they just got from somewhere,” Salcedo said. “Yes, there’s celebrations for Mexican people, but just the scene itself looked very poorly done.”
Selena Gomez, who also appears in the film, is of Mexican descent, and was criticized for her lack of Spanish fluency, USA Today reported.
Asked about what Hollywood should do, Salcedo said, “There’s a lot of talent in the trans community. There’s a lot of actors of trans experience” who should be highlighted and consulted going forward.
“I think the fact Karla has been highlighted is great for her,” Salcedo said. “But, again, if the funds invested in promoting this movie – the access you have to people who make decisions and what stories are told – there has been a full campaign to make sure this movie is received, and it kind of fits, because of what we’re going through politically. It’s just a way for Netflix to say they’re investing in something like this, but what they’re not doing is investing in the community.”
Netflix didn’t immediately return a request for comment for this report.
Audiard seems to have heard some of the criticism. The Guardian reported January 16 that he said the film isn’t intended to be realistic.
“If there are things that seem shocking in Emilia Pérez then I am sorry … Cinema doesn’t provide answers, it only asks questions,” he said, according to the paper. “But maybe the questions in Emilia Pérez are incorrect.”
However, the Guardian noted that Audiard has been defended by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who described him as “one of the most amazing film-makers alive today.”
Gascón, who is Spanish, wrote on social media, “It’s a pity that [critics] use so many profiles to (uselessly) attack a film with such a beautiful message and representation, instead of using them to support Mexican films and creators.”