“Emilia Pérez”: Pretentious Nonsense That Claims to Be Artistic

Aside from Wicked, musicals have taken a beat this year. But this film by French director Jacques Audiard must be the worst crime so far.  

Summary

Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) is a lawyer working for a major firm. After winning an important case by falsely presenting a murder involving a prominent figure as a suicide, she is contacted by cartel leader Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón).

This man wants Rita to help him with a delicate matter: disappearing Manitas and beginning a new life as a woman.

Cannes Film Festival’s Little Jewel

By this point, I believe we’ve all learned to mistrust Cannes and their hour-long standing ovations. It’s clear those people would give a standing ovation to anything.

It was that famous event that put the film Emilia Pérez on the list of the most anticipated projects of the year and positioned it as a clear contender for the 2025 award season. That’s how it came to my attention, and being a musical enthusiast, I had to see if it was really as big a deal as critics were saying.

Let me tell you that it was not.

How to Not Talk About Serious Topics

Emilia Perez tries to sell itself as a deep and serious movie that touches on very difficult real-life situations. In reality, the entire story is supported by the fact that its protagonist is transgender, and even that is not given much background. There’s a scene in which Manitas tells the potential doctor he has dreamed of being a woman since childhood, and that’s all it takes for the doctor to agree to perform many life-altering surgeries on him. And it’s also supposed to be enough for the audience to completely connect with Emilia and root for her.

But who is Manitas/Emilia? At a personal level, we’re speaking about a person who made his family experience the trauma of believing he was dead, just so he could be free to live his dream. On a general level, we’re speaking of a dangerous criminal. Or do the surgeries also wash away all of your sins?

As Emilia, a cartel leader becomes a benefactor, a lovely, wealthy lady who helps families find the remains of their loved ones. Many of the loved ones she was personally responsible for eliminating. She is not doing it anonymously or using her money in that way as penitence. She is showing off what an amazing and disinterested person she is. It’s even more shameless when you think that Emilia Pérez has also been promoted as a piece that “explores the violence in Mexico.” But they side with one of the people causing it?

Why am I supposed to feel bad for a character like that? The intention of the film is to give a terrible person an undeserved absolution. Why? Because it’s a trans person, and according to the modern rules, that makes you inherently good. You can do no wrong.

Rita is another corrupt soul that has no sense of morality and is always willing to help the people who don’t deserve it. For a sizable sum, of course.

A Musical Nightmare

I thought that Joker: Folie à Deux was a low point for musical films, the worst of the last years. Then I watched Emilia Pérez, and I realized that I was too hard on poor Arthur. As lame as his musical numbers were, they are miles away from the ones starring Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, and Selena Gomez.

If I have to compare Emilia Pérez musical moments to something, I would say the entire film looks like one of those performances that liberal art students put on to protest whatever cause is trendy at the moment. It could be patriarchy, foreign conflicts they understand nothing about, election results they don’t like, climate change, you name it. Those performances are characterized by being preachy, annoying, and unpleasant, and lack any form of artistic beauty. And they have to make the audience feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. This film achieves all of that, and then some.

It looks and sounds horrible, but you cannot take your eyes out of it. It’s so bizarre, you can’t help but wonder if they are being serious. For example, less than half an hour into the film, you are treated to a song called “La Vaginoplastia” (“The Vaginoplasty”), in which Rita is trying to make arrangements for Manitas’ sex reassignment surgery. Subtle, right?

The Worst Performance of the Year

In my opinion, all the performances in the film are terrible. But terrible in an unusual way. Everyone in the main cast seems to be so convinced they are participating in the highest form of artistic expression; they transmit so much condescension that it is infuriating to watch them. But if I have to choose my least favorite of all, that award would go straight to Selena Gomez.

Gomez plays Jessi, Manitas’s wife and mother of his two kids. Her intervention in Emilia Pérez and the fact that she’s being praised for it simply break my brain. I can’t wrap my head around it. Why is everyone lying to her like that? It was not good!

Her acting is not good, her singing is not good, and her Spanish is horrendous. She is incapable of stringing two words together.

Is This The Famous “Representation”?

With the entertainment industry’s constant preach about representation, one would think they would have a small investigation about Mexico, given the film takes place there and is presented as “a social criticism.”

First, none of the main actors are Mexican. Wasn’t it a rule that characters could only be played by people that were exactly like them? That’s what the industry has been selling for years, even in cases as silly as voice acting, where it doesn’t matter.

I wouldn’t mind if the cast could at least pass for Mexican by using a believable accent, and if dialogues were written using expressions that people in Mexico would use in a day-to-day life.

I understand that if you’re not a native Spanish speaker, maybe you won’t notice this, but in Mexico and in the rest of Latin American countries, people know. I’m aware Zoe Saldaña can speak the language well, despite not sounding Mexican at all. But Selena Gomez is simply an embarrassment; she sounds like a robot.

And it personally bothered me that the dialogues were written to be vulgar. There is a scene when Jessy is talking to her lover on the phone, and the expression she uses to communicate to the guy that she misses him is cringe-worthy and tasteless. No one in Mexico or any other country where they speak Spanish would say that. The person who wrote the screenplay was working with Google Translate. I can’t prove it, but I’m sure.

The Next Award Season’s Favorite?

Jacques Audiard’s musical is set to have a theater release in the next couple of weeks in some countries, while others have it already available on Netflix.

The fact that it most probably will receive some awards is a disgrace to the industry and a solid proof of just how disconnected they have become from real talent and beauty. As long as the production checks a certain number of boxes and uses all the proper keywords, it instantly becomes deserving of every award under the sun. Please.

Last March, when the Academy Awards ceremony aired, I heard people acknowledging “good will” on Hollywood’s side, because they presented a relatively normal event. I continued to be pessimistic, and now I see that I was right on being so: these people are past redemption. They will continue to push the worst ideology into everything they can reach, patting themselves on the back for being “stunning and brave.”

In fact, I’m fully expecting Hollywood people to double down on their crap next year. After all, a recent political event had made them realize normal people couldn’t care less about their opinion. And I think some of them are a bit offended.