By Carlos Aguilar
When “Emilia Pérez” premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival last May, the reaction from critics in attendance and the jury was overwhelm-ingly positive.
The French-produced, Spanish-lan-guage 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 pic-ture by French director Jacques Audiard and launched an imposing awards campaign. Widely embraced by the film industry, “Emil-ia 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 transgender actor nominated for an Academy Award. In recent weeks, she has become engulfed in contro-versy 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 month, journalist Sarah Hagi un-earthed offensive statements that Gascón posted in Spanish on social platform X over the past 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, defend-ing 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, and is absent from newly released publicity.
Speaking to Deadline last week, Au-diard 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 particu-larly inopportune time as final Oscar voting started Feb. 11 and runs 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 interna-tional film and best supporting actress (for Saldaña) where “Emilia Pérez” was a per-ceived front-runner. The film picked up three prizes at the Critics‘ Choice Awards on Fri-day, but was shut out at Saturday’s Directors Guild and Producers Guild ceremonies. Gas-cón was not in attendance at any of the three events. Voting for the Critics‘ Choice Awards closed weeks before Gascón’s old posts re-surfaced; voting closed for the two other shows in the midst of the scandal.
Negative reception in Mexico
Since 2006, more than 400,000 people have died and more than 100,000 have dis-appeared 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 Uni-versal, one of the country’s most prominent newspapers, 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 back-drop has also been repeatedly questioned. (Adriana Paz is the only Mexican actor in the principal cast.) “Emilia Pérez” was almost en-tirely shot on French soundstages. Casting di-rector 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 Go-mez, 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.
Director Jacques Audiard’s comments Throughout the extensive promotional tour for “Emilia Pérez,” Audiard has made statements that sparked negative online reac-tions.
On multiple occasions, the French film-maker, who doesn’t speak Spanish, has ex-plained 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 start-ed circulating on social media, Audiard re-ferred to Spanish as “a language of develop-ing countries, humble countries, of the poor, of migrants.”
During a news conference before 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 LGBTQ+ film critics Back in November, the LGBTQ+ ad-vocacy organization GLAAD released a statement that described “Emilia Pérez” as “a profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman,” and “a step backward for trans rep-resentation.”
GLAAD also collected multiple reviews by LGBTQ+ critics (several of them trans-gender people) denouncing Audiard’s film in publications including the Cut and Little White Lies. In her review for Autostraddle, 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 transgender tropes used in the narrative such as “deadnaming and misgendering at pivotal moments” and “transition treated as a death.” The Mexican parody ‘Johanne Sacre-blu’
In response to “Emilia Pérez,” Camila Aurora, a Mexican transgender content cre-ator 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 You-Tube.
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