As a fluent Spanish speaker who regularly watches Spanish-language content without subtitles, I can attest that Gomez’s Spanish was unintelligible. A Spanish-language film set in Mexico with Mexican characters, being indecipherable to Mexican audiences who will presumably watch the film without subtitles, is an offense that should be called out. It is an outrage. -- Adriana Santos, The Lantinx Project
If you, like me, have been following the movie award season somewhat closely, you’ve likely heard of Emilia Perez. The film follows Rita (Zoe Saldana), a lawyer helping the titular Emilia Perez (Karla Sofia Gascon), a trans woman cartel leader fake her death to live as a woman and escape her violent life. The controversial Netflix film has swept the Golden Globes and racked up an incredible 13 Oscar nominations, including the shocking Golden Globes win for Best Motion Picture - Musical Or Comedy over the Blockbuster Wicked. Overwhelmingly, it appears to be a critical darling.
However, outside of the industry itself, the response has been overwhelmingly negative, to say the least. The film has been criticized for, among other things, lacking a Mexican cast in a film set in Mexico, being made by a French director who shot the film in Spain, poorly depicting the trans experience, poorly depicting Cartel violence, terrible Spanish song lyrics, and just in general being a bad musical. It begs the question then, Why did this film get nominated for so many awards if general audiences all seem to hate it? So dear viewer, I shall watch this movie and report back to answer the question of whether Emilia Perez is truly as bad as they say.
Yes It Is.
Dear god. All those people were right, this movie is not good. The worst part about this movie isn’t that it’s boring or even outright offensive, it’s how frustrating it is. It's such a contradictory mess of a film that doesn’t have a clear vision, and it squanders every single opportunity that it has to be somewhat alright. That’s not even getting into the terrible implications of the film. It just all around sucks, and it was a total slog to get through from start to finish.
The movie follows lawyer Rita (Zoe Saldana), who gives the only passable performance, both acting and vocally, as she helps cartel lord Manitas (Karla Sofia Gascon) fake her death in order to live as Emilia Perez, causing her wife and children to suffer the pain of her death, before Rita helps Emilia pose as her old identitiy’s cousin to return to her wife and kids. Selena Gomez plays Jessi, the wife of Emilia’s old identity, who speaks in terrible Spanish and is treated by the narrative as wrong merely for moving on from her former husband’s death. She also can’t sing.
The narrative constantly flip flops on the titular Emilia Perez, unsure if transitioning and leaving her old life absolves her of all her responsibilities or whether she can’t escape her past. Neither of these ideas are presented compellingly and it ultimately settles on the former despite the fact she never takes responsibility for her past actions. Despite never taking responsibility, she is at several points forgiven by victims of her actions and is treated as being justified for trying to possessively interject back into her children's life.
The movie plain sucks as a musical. Most of the songs run the range from merely alright, to painfully underdeveloped, to downright bad. Most of the songs just abruptly end before they have the time to develop themselves. They never build to anything, with a few songs being somewhat catchy and having potential, but never being developed enough. It feels like it was written by someone who doesn’t understand musicals. The “I Want Song” from the main character, Emila, doesn’t happen until halfway through the runtime. The one almost alright song, “El Mal,” doesn’t contribute to the plot after it's sung and feels like it just gets forgotten. Additionally, the lyrics are similarly awful. It doesn’t help that Karla Sofia Gascon, respectfully, can’t sing. She constantly sounds out of breath and the film even needed to use AI to increase her vocal register. So why was she cast as the lead of a musical?
The Implications
The worst part of the film, however, is how much it misrepresents both the trans experience and Mexico as a whole. Now, since I am an American cisgender white boy, I am going to try to use sources from people who are better qualified to articulate why this film sucks.
The film, despite being praised in Hollywood as a revolutionary trans art piece, manages to perpetuate a lot of negative stereotypes. While plenty is placed on Emilia’s desire to live as her true self, a woman, an equal amount of focus is placed on her desire to escape her past as a cartel leader. According to a them article “Emilia Pérez Is Bad, Actually. Why Does Awards Season Love It?,” Fran Tirrado writes, “... [Her] transition is framed as an absolution, used as a tool for deception, and made to be the reason for her redemption and saint-like anointing at the end.” Her transition is also treated selfishly, as abandoning her wife and children, then trying to re-enter their lives without revealing her past identity. She, by living as a woman, is framed by the narrative as living a lie. Her transition is treated as a rebirth, misrepresenting the process greatly. Not to mention, it perpetuates many more transphobic tropes, such as her cheating on her wife or her at one point reverting to her old violent self, deepening her voice, which presents her transition as a lie by a violent man. Drew Burnett Gregory essentially describes it as a laundry list of Transphobic tropes.
Not only is this film greatly transphobic, it has also been criticized by Mexican viewers as being highly insensitive. As previously mentioned, Selena Gomez’s spanish has been criticized, which according to Adriana Santos article “‘Emilia Perez’ Is All Outline, No Substance,” “As a fluent Spanish speaker who regularly watches Spanish-language content without subtitles, I can attest that Gomez’s Spanish was unintelligible. A Spanish-language film set in Mexico with Mexican characters, being indecipherable to Mexican audiences who will presumably watch the film without subtitles, is an offense that should be called out. It is an outrage.” The film also trivializes the hardships caused in Mexico because of cartel violence. It features many baffling scenes, such as a mother of a child killed by a cartel forgiving Emilia, or the film whitewashing the violence Emilia caused by having her enlist cartel members to search for victims. It is all around a deeply flawed film. According to Jack Hamilton’s article for Slate “Emilia Perez is Not a Good Movie,” “Mexican viewers have excoriated the film’s sensationalist and deeply retrograde depiction of their country as a violence-ridden failed state, as well as Audiard’s seeming disinterest in anything resembling cultural authenticity.”
Should You Watch This?
Please don’t. Don’t even hate-watch it, like I did. It is as bad as I tell you it is. It isn’t even funny-bad, just boring and frustrating. In fact, don’t even think about this film. This film is entirely undeserving of it. Obviously, the fact that this film was nominated for 13 Oscars is a disgrace to the Academy. It truly shows how out of touch they are. Instead, I am going to close out this review with a bit of positivity and give some much better movie recommendations. If you want a movie which I have been told is a better LGBTQ movie that is genuinely more experimental, go watch I Saw The TV Glow. If you want a better film about Latin America, watch the Brazilian I’m Still Here. Or, if you simply want to watch a good musical, just re-watch Wicked. There are so many films more deserving of praise, especially from Latino and LGBTQ artists. Just please, don’t watch Emila Perez. I truly took one for the team at the Lance.
Love this review Jax! Very funny, very real.