When “Emilia Pérez” premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival last May, the reaction from critics in attendance and the jury was overwhelmingly positive.
The French-produced, Spanish-language musical about a Mexican cartel boss who transitions into a woman and attempts to become a paragon of virtue won the jury prize (essentially third place) and its stars — Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz — shared the best actress award.
Netflix, the powerful global streaming company that has had a best picture Oscar in its sights but out of its grasp since the 2019 ceremony, acquired the unconventional picture by the French director Jacques Audiard and launched an imposing awards campaign. Widely embraced by the film industry, “Emilia Pérez” received 13 Oscar nominations last month — leading this year’s pack and falling one short of tying the record.
One of those nominations belongs to Gascón, who plays the titular character and became the first openly trans actor nominated for an Academy Award. In recent weeks, she has become engulfed in controversy that has threatened to derail the awards hopes for both her and the film. But since “Emilia Pérez” debuted in select theaters and then on Netflix late last year, there has been plenty of backlash on multiple fronts that has marred its pathway to Oscar glory. Here are the broad strokes of the controversies.
Karla Sofía Gascón’s Resurfaced Social Media Posts
Last week, the journalist Sarah Hagi unearthed offensive statements that Gascón posted in Spanish on X over the last few years. The disparaging comments touched on topics like George Floyd, Islam, and even the 2021 Oscar ceremony.
Gascón has since apologized, deleted her X account and given a lengthy interview on CNN en Español that she booked without Netflix’s involvement or authorization. She has also stayed active on Instagram, defending herself against criticism.
The actress has argued that some of her opinions had been taken out of context and some posts had been doctored by malicious parties wishing to harm her reputation. Now, Netflix has distanced the “Emilia Pérez” awards campaign from Gascón, who will no longer attend upcoming events in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara and is absent from newly released publicity.
Speaking to Deadline this week, Audiard called Gascón’s resurfaced comments “inexcusable,” adding that he hasn’t spoken with the actress — who he thinks is in a “self-destructive approach.” After that interview, Gascón said that with her diminished profile, she hopes her “silence will allow the film to be appreciated for what it is, a beautiful ode to love and difference.”
The development comes at a particularly inopportune time as final Oscar voting takes place next Tuesday through Feb. 18. It remains to be seen if the fallout of Gascón’s posts will affect the film’s winning chances, especially in categories such as best international film and best supporting actress (for Saldaña) where “Emilia Pérez” was a perceived front-runner.
Negative Reception in Mexico
Since 2006, over 400,000 people have died and more than 100,000 have disappeared as a result of ongoing drug-related violence across Mexico. It is in this context that some Mexican viewers believe Audiard’s outlandish vision treats the national tragedy in a frivolous manner, while glamorizing its horrors.
In a recent opinion piece for El Universal, one of the country’s most prominent newspapers, the writer Ytzel Maya noted that “‘Emilia Pérez’ ends up trivializing violence by stripping it of its structural complexity,” adding that the film fails to interrogate “the material conditions that sustain the criminal war.”
The lack of Mexican talent involved in front and behind the camera in a story that uses the country and its issues as a backdrop has also been repeatedly questioned. (Adriana Paz is the only Mexican actor in the principal cast.)“Emilia Pérez” was almost entirely shot on French soundstages. The casting director Carla Hool explained during a Q&A in November that while they searched for actors in Mexico and Latin America, ultimately they decided to go with the best options, even if they were not Mexican. This comment only added to the uproar.
Some of the criticisms also revolve around the use of language, which some find offensively inauthentic given the casting choices. Clips of scenes featuring Selena Gomez, who plays a Mexican American woman named Jessi, delivering outrageous lines in heavily accented Spanish have turned into widely shared memes among Mexican social media users.
The Mexican actor and comedian Eugenio Derbez described Gomez’s performance as “indefensible” during an interview, a comment for which he later apologized.
The Director Jacques Audiard’s Comments
Throughout the extensive promotional tour for “Emilia Pérez,” Audiard has made statements that sparked negative online reactions.
On multiple occasions, the French filmmaker, who doesn’t speak Spanish, has explained he didn’t do substantial research to understand the drug war that afflicts Mexico, as he felt confident he knew enough for the purposes of his narrative.
In another interview that recently started circulating on social media, Audiard referred to Spanish as “a language of developing countries, humble countries, of the poor, of migrants.”
During a news conference ahead of the film’s theatrical release in Mexico, Audiard apologized, explaining that he tried to be prudent and reflective in his approach of the delicate subject matter and added, “If you think I’m doing it too lightly, I apologize.”
Objections from L.G.B.T.Q. Film Critics
Back in November, the L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization GLAAD released a statement that described “Emilia Pérez” as “a profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman,” and “a step backward for trans representation.”
GLAAD also collected multiple reviews by L.G.B.T.Q. critics (several of them trans people) denouncing Audiard’s film in publications including the Cut and Little White Lies. In her review for Autostraddle, the filmmaker and writer Drew Burnett Gregory explained that “the problem with ‘Emilia Pérez’ is that while it’s new in some ways, it’s very, very tired in others,” and went on to list trans tropes used in the narrative such as “deadnaming and misgendering at pivotal moments” and “transition treated as a death.”
The Mexican Parody ‘Johanne Sacreblu’
In response to “Emilia Pérez,” Camila Aurora, a Mexican trans content creator and activist, created a short film parody titled “Johanne Sacreblu.”
Since Audiard’s award-winning film tells a story set in Mexico but was mostly shot in Paris with a mostly non-Mexican cast, Aurora’s no-budget production was filmed in the streets of Mexico City with Mexican performers putting on stilted French accents and dressed in stereotypical attires (namely striped shirts and berets). The short has so far amassed more than 2.8 million views on YouTube.
