Best Pictures #114: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
“Hello, very nice to meet you! I'd like to know about sex-change operation.”
Emilia Pérez received a stunning 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Best International Picture, becoming the most nominated foreign language film in the history of the Academy. It won the Special Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and received much critical praise. I cannot for the life of me understand why. Even aside from its controversies, including backlash from the transgender community and being offensive to the entire nation of Mexico, this is just a very bad movie on many levels.
The controversy-free Zoe Saldaña plays Rita, a Mexican lawyer recruited by the drug lord Manitas to help facilitate their transition to female. Rita goes about finding a good and discreet surgeon and setting up safety nets for Manitas's wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and children since he will fake his death to fully become Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón). Years later Emilia misses her children and has Rita arrange her return to Mexico City and bring Jessi and the children to live with her, now posing as Manitas's cousin. Emilia begins a romance with a woman widowed from cartel violence but when Jessi becomes involved with a former lover and wants to leave Mexico City with the children, trouble ensues.
Karla Sofía Gascón made Oscar history by becoming the first openly trans performer nominated for Best Actress–the goodwill for this accomplishment has since been soured by reporting on racist and hateful tweets followed by awkward non-apology statements. Off screen statements or actions aside, Emilia is a surprisingly bland character. After she transitions, Emilia is a benevolent figure. She starts an organization to locate the bodies of people missing and killed because of drug cartel violence. It does not come up that certainly some of these “disappeared” people are victims of Emilia’s past as a drug lord. She also retains and enjoys all of the wealth made in the drug trade. However, Emilia’s gentleness and benevolence last only as long as things are going her way. The idea that an unhappy and violent person may continue to be unhappy and violent even after they receive gender affirming treatment is brought up by the surgeon from Tel Aviv. This is an interesting idea, but it is not explored. The climax involves kidnapping, drug money, a big shoot out, and a car chase that could have been directed by Toonces the Driving Cat, because, you know, Latins are so hot blooded.
Of all the movie’s Oscar nominations Saldaña’s is the least perplexing, until you realize that is for Supporting Actress and Saldaña’s Rita is the main character. Selena Gomez stands out in a bad way but the fault is not entirely hers; her character has no personality or background or growth. Does Emilia react with shock at the thought of Jessi moving away with their children because Jessi is a bad mother or is it simply out of jealousy? We don’t see Jessi being a bad mother or a good mother. We don’t know if she was a party girl that never wanted to be a wife. She mentions to Emilia that she was afraid of Manitas but even this moment falls flat offering little insight into her past or present state of mind.
Also this movie is a musical. I did not mention that until now because the movie itself barely cares about being a musical. There is good lively pacing at first but that stumbles when it becomes obvious that the movie could not decide if it should be sung through like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or just have songs periodically. The Tel Aviv surgeon seems unable to figure out if he should sing in a traditional style or talk-sing like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. This is the result of bad direction. Somehow, two songs received Best Original Song nominations. El Mal is a big showy number, memorable because of Saldaña’s physicality while moving around tables and guests at a banquet. This is the song most like something from a Broadway musical. The other nominated song, Mi Camino, I only remember because at this point a bag of chips suddenly and mysteriously fell off the top of my refrigerator. For the most part the choreography is just as forgettable as most of the songs, if not just outright bad--especially for the song where Selena Gomez is just rolling around in her bed and messing about with pillows. When even I notice how bad the choreography is, something has gone terribly wrong.
Of course LGBTQ viewers and critics are better suited than I to speak about the film’s problems from that perspective though I can say with confidence that the screenplay uses transitioning like a soap opera plot device at best. There are so many other problems though and unfortunately the root seems to be the French director Jacques Audiard. Audiard does not speak Spanish or English; perhaps this accounts for the clunky dialogue and mistranslated swear words–you can confirm this with any 8-year-old with a Spanish last name–since the screenplay was presumably written in French, translated into Spanish, and then into English. He also admitted to doing little to no research about Mexican culture, wanting to use Mexico merely as a backdrop, and said that Spanish is a language of poor people and immigrants. It does not help that he cast non-Mexicans (two Americans, Saldaña and Gomez, and a Spaniard, Gascón) in the major roles. This is not necessarily a problem (a film like La Bamba, about the Chicano/Mexican-American Ritchie Valens stars people of Filipino, Puerto Rican, and Cuban background but that is hardly the flaw with that movie; Selena stars Jennifer Lopez, but don’t you dare say anything bad about Jennifer Lopez when she’s playing Selena) but it comes across as laziness on the part of the filmmakers–surely there exist 3 actress in Mexico who can sing and dance and act. I am not Mexican and I do not speak Spanish but I am of Mexican descent (3rd generation), a Chicano, or Hispanic, or Latin–though I cannot keep up with the ever changing terms, each claiming to be more correct than the last, so I identify as “whatever-white-people-call-us” and I am 100% not joking about that–and I grew up in South Texas so I have a strong sense for when a movie is legit about portraying Mexicans, or people of Mexican descent, or Mexican culture. Emilia Pérez is not legit.
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