If only more criminals knew that all it takes to wash away your sins and make the world a better place is to fake your own death, change gender, assume the identity of a long-lost aunt, move your widow and children back into your home, and start an NGO.
At least that is the bizarre, clumsy message of Emilia Pérez, the all-singing, all-dancing, Golden Globe-winning, Bafta-nominated, Oscar-baiting musical about a lawyer who engineers the disappearance and transition of a cartel boss and which features a number titled “La Vaginoplastia” set in a Bangkok gender reconstruction clinic that must have Rodgers and Hammerstein turning in their graves.
Emilia Pérez, directed by French auteur Jacques Audiard and streaming on Netflix, is this awards season’s unexpected success, and on Thursday earned 13 Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Actress (Karla Sofía Gascón as the eponymous Emilia), Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña), Best Director and Best Original Score. It is ambitious in scope, unpredictable in plot, earnest and weird and dark. It is also the worst film I have seen in years.
Emilia Pérez is an insult – to musicals, Mexicans, the trans community, and to the viewing public who generally consider films as a form of entertainment, rather than punishment. It trivialises cartel violence, delivers an apologist message for drug traffickers through its clumsy redemption narrative for an evil killer (antiheroes can be humanised – but good luck finding that kind of depth here).
It is a film of almost exclusively female characters, but they are written with no thought or strength of character and so the performances suffer. Saldaña is a charisma-devoid accomplice with no arc or motives of her own. Selena Gomez is a shallow mob wife only interested in money and sex.
Karla Sofia Gascón and Zoe Saldaña in Emilia Pérez (Photo: Shanna Besson/WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS/FRANCE2 Cinema)It is also controversial. It perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Mexico, was filmed in France, Audiard has admitted no attempt to engage with Mexican culture and its casting director has faced backlash in Mexico by claiming the reason none of its central actors are Mexican is because there simply weren’t any good enough. In the case of Gomez and Saldaña, they don’t even speak good Spanish.
As for its representation of trans woman – it is completely backwards. It displays a dangerous and spectacularly creepy fixation on the mechanics of bodily reassignment that the trans community has fought hard to move away from, and its uncomfortable central plot rests on the assumption that along with vaginoplasty comes a whole new identity.
I’m all for big swings in cinema – and I’m thrilled when some outside bet or story about an overlooked community gets recognised with a Best Picture win – look at Moonlight, or Everything Everywhere All at Once, deserving, original, but above all, human.
Perhaps I would even be willing to forgive Emilia Pérez’s litany of insensitivities if the music was good (no), if the script was clever (no), if the execution was fun or playful (not remotely) or if it felt human. But the concept stretches plausibility so far and the characters feel so lifeless that there simply is no attempt to engage with authentic emotions, no way to make the story feel resonant, moving, powerful.
Unfortunately, it is like a bad, boring telenovela that took me far too long to realise I was supposed to take seriously. Indeed, it is hard to feel that its “representation” of minority communities, identity politics and Mexican culture aren’t merely part of a cynical attempt to win praise and plaudits from liberal Hollywood at a time these issues are most weaponised by Trump.
The Oscars are trying to make up for past mistakes - but it isn't working
Read MoreLast year, Oppenheimer was a shoo-in for Best Picture. But Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Zone of Interest, even Past Lives or The Holdovers would have been just as deserving and in another year, could have won it. This time, things are less clear-cut.
Among them, period post-war epic The Brutalist is the frontrunner, papal thriller Conclave a critic and crowd favourite, Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan flick A Complete Unknown the obligatory biopic, Anora the totally brilliant indie outsider about a sex worker who marries a young oligarch, and of course, Wicked.
They are all more traditional choices than a musical about a transgender crime lord but, for once, I hope the Academy plays it safe and recognises something other than this virtue-signalling, offensive bilge.
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