The movie Emilia Pérez came out in 2024 on Netflix. The movie had a limited theatrical release as the streaming giant was behind the production. People immediately began watching it and according to the viewer reviews of the film, it was not exactly well received.
While audiences may have shunned the movie as a disaster, juries for various award shows including the Academy Awards, simply love the film. The film has 13 nominations at the Oscars, breaking the record for a film not in English language.
So what exactly is it about this film that has people so divided?
The movie Emilia Pérez has been making a lot of headlines lately, and not just because of the huge number of award nominations it has been getting. Some of the cast and crew have also been embroiled in controversy lately.
If you have not yet seen the film, it is set in Mexico. A lawyer named Rita is working at an exploitative firm when she is approached by cartel boss Juan “Little Hands” Del Monte—aka Manitas. He asks her to help make him disappear forever and, in doing so, help him transition to a woman, something that he has been desiring for many years.
The current rating for the film on IMDb is 5.5/10 from over 72,000 reviews. Clearly it has not gained the kind of popularity with viewers as it has with critics. It has a 72% rating on Rotten Tomatoes by critics. Mostly the critical reception of the film was a lot more positive than the audience reception of it. With American film critic, Peter Travers calling it something “you don’t want to miss.”
But as the movie started gaining steam and Oscar buzz, there was also some other noise surrounding it; that of dissent. People were upset, mainly people from Mexico who thought the movie depicted tired stereotypes of the country and its people.
The cast and crew famously did not feature any Mexicans, which people took as another indicator that the film’s team did not bother to tell a story that could even vaguely be authentic. The director of the film is Jacques Audiard, who is French. He has been fiercely criticized as it is said he does not know Spanish at all and made a film in the language.
Mexican screenwriter Héctor Guillén had a lot to say about the movie. He said, “There’s a drug war, nearly 500,000 deaths [since 2006] and 100,000 missing in the country. We are still immersed in the violence in some areas. You are taking one of the most difficult topics in the country, but it’s not only any film, it’s an opera. It’s a musical. So for us and many activists, it’s like you are playing with one of the biggest wars in the country since the Revolution [in the early 20th Century].”
He reiterates his disdain, saying, “Part of the plot is about searching mothers of the disappeared [searching for their children]: one of the most vulnerable groups in Mexico. And there were zero words in the four Golden Globe acceptance speeches to the victims.”
Apart from Mexicans finding the movie offensive even the LGBTQ+ community was not too happy about the portrayal of trans characters.
GLAAD, which awards and champions films about and from the LGBTQ+ community, passed over the film during their awards, calling it “a profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman.”
If this wasn’t enough, old tweets from the film’s lead Karla Sofía Gascón emerged on social media. The tweets shared xenophobic and racist views the actress holds about various communities. One of the tweets, translated from Spanish, read, “I’m Sorry, Is it just my impression or is there more muslims in Spain? Every time I go to pick up my daughter from school there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels. Next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic.”
While another made in January 2021 said, “Islam fails to comply with international rights,” and that religions “must be banned as long as it does not comply with DDHH” — an abbreviation for human rights in Spanish law. She also gave her two-cents on the murder of George Floyd, writing, “I really think that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict swindler, but his death has served to once again demonstrate that there are people who still consider black people to be monkeys Without rights and consider policemen to be assassins. They’re all wrong.”
She also tweeted about the 2021 Oscars where ‘Nomadland’ won best picture. She wrote, “More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M,” she wrote. “Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”
When these tweets surfaced, people were shocked. This put a further bad taste in audiences’ mouths and reduced any goodwill the movie might have had. Despite all of these controversies and bad reviews from audiences, the critical reception of the film cannot be denied as well as the Academy’s support of it.
Entertainment journalist and pop culture expert Tatyana Arrington weighed in on this incongruence with us, “Emilia Perez” is undoubtedly the biggest question mark of this awards season—what exactly did critics and voters see in the film that audiences didn’t? There’s no justifiable reason why it should have received more nominations than The Godfather. It was, without a doubt, the most daring and unique film I saw in 2024, but I also believe the criticisms it has faced are valid,” she said.
Arrington concluded, “That said, a different conversation emerges—one that questions who gets to tell certain stories. Any community or identity group would likely take issue with seeing their culture depicted inaccurately, especially when no members of that group were involved in the filmmaking process.”
Clearly, whichever side they might be on, people have strong opinions about this film.
Do you think Emilia Pérez deserved all the nominations it received? Let us know in the comments, and share this with others to see what they think!
