Emilia Perez (2024)

February 5, 2025 6:05 AM

Emilia Perez follows four women in Mexico, each pursuing their own happiness.
posted by EmpressCallipygos (18 comments total)

This movie is racist and transphobic. It’s also terribly paced, poorly acted, and the music is bad. It is STUNNING to me that this was received with anything other than grimaces.

From reviews that came across my Letterboxd:
“embarassingly shallow”
"bafflingly regressive"
"lacks any discernible intentionality”

(Also, it’s “Pérez”…the film's creators clearly don’t give a shit about Mexico but we can at least spell the title character’s name correctly)
posted by bcwinters at 6:36 AM on February 5 [7 favorites]

YouTuber Jessie Gender (one of my fave YT commenters of the moment) did a big takedown of this; Netflix took it seriously enough to try to quash it.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:41 AM on February 5 [6 favorites]

Apparently there's a whole faction of actors and people in Hollywood who absolutely adore and love this film, which may be a reason for it's nomination success. After reading a review at But Why Thou's site, which they assigned to a Mexican reviewer, that was all I needed to know. That Mexican artists turned around and made a mocking French version of the film, playing up stereotypes and so on, was the cherry on the cake, though.
posted by Atreides at 6:54 AM on February 5 [7 favorites]

And one of the stars, Karla Sofía Gascón, is getting a ton of attention for her racist, Islamophobic, and bigoted social media posts.
posted by maryellenreads at 7:26 AM on February 5 [3 favorites]

This clip pops up on TikTok often and I watch in horror every time.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:55 AM on February 5

Also, it’s “Pérez”…the film's creators clearly don’t give a shit about Mexico but we can at least spell the title character’s name correctly

The film DOES get it right - my own computer was rendering the characters weirdly when I made the post and I went with the plain E to fix that, so it didn't render as "Emilia P^%%&rez" or something.

My hunch is that the film is coasting on some presumed goodwill from "but the main character is trans, isn't that amazing?" and that's why it did as well as it did in the Oscar nominations. I saw it recently, and

a) I'm glad that it's on Netflix so I didn't have to spend money on it, and
b) While it wasn't as bad as others lead me to believe, I can definitely think of several other more deserving films that should have been nominated instead.

It's also a hell of a shame that what should be a historic nomination (first trans woman nominated for Best Actress) is being tarnished by Gascón being that big of a bigot.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:58 AM on February 5 [6 favorites]

The film DOES get it right - my own computer was rendering the characters weirdly when I made the post and I went with the plain E to fix that, so it didn't render as "Emilia P^%%&rez" or something.

Makes sense! I flagged it, maybe a mod can fix it with whatever encoding works.

It's also a hell of a shame that what should be a historic nomination (first trans woman nominated for Best Actress) is being tarnished by Gascón being that big of a bigot.

She really turned out to be the literal worst, which is especially a bummer because (even though I did shit all over this movie in my first comment) her performance is actually pretty interesting. Like…a little Almodóvar-y?

Adriana Paz was also pretty good although it seemed like maybe she hadn’t been shown any script pages for scenes she wasn’t in and therefore had no idea what the tone of the film was supposed to be. Or maybe Audiard didn’t know either.
posted by bcwinters at 8:17 AM on February 5 [1 favorite]

I don't have much to add.

The further most of us get into accepting intersectionality as a critical need for progress, the more disappointing it gets when someone from an at-risk demo is furiously punching left, right, and down as hard as they can.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:41 AM on February 5 [7 favorites]

I just hope someone checks on Selena Gomez and makes sure she's OK. I get the impression she's kinda hanging by a thread at the best of times.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 4:36 PM on February 5 [2 favorites]

I liked the experience of watching this because it's just so bonkers but no, it's absolutely problematic. It's extremely regressive as a trans story. It's some ridiculous telenovela nonsense and not really in a good way.

But as I've said elsewhere, I think it ticks the boxes for a lot of people that don't watch a lot of movies that it's not in English, it's made by a French director and it has some vague social message people can get behind. And oh, it's a musical!

I don't know why it got as much traction as it did. I really didn't think it had any Oscar chances but apparently I was wrong.

(I can't speak to her Spanish, but I liked Gomez a lot in this -- I think she was the most interesting character.)

I know this is part of a bigger conversation and I understand that a lot of people don't have time to watch movies or only are going to watch what movies they like. That's cool. But I also think the key to understanding movies -- including this one -- is just to ... watch a lot of movies. Seeing more movies won't make this good or bad for someone but it would feel less novel.
posted by edencosmic at 5:42 PM on February 5

Selena Gomez doesn't need to keep acting. Her corporation has made her a billionaire (which I think is in some ways much more interesting than the hardworking Taylor Swift). So she CHOSE to do this to herself. Of course, film is a collaboration and no one knows how it will turn out until the final cut, I guess.
posted by rikschell at 8:36 PM on February 5 [1 favorite]

.....Maybe she LIKES acting? I mean, Daniel Radcliffe doesn't need to keep acting either, but he still does it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:52 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]

Weird movie. I don't speak Spanish so I missed the botched dialects and such. But it really did feel like a telenovela in parts.

Some odd aesthetic choices that jumped out at me: Saldaña's eyebrows... in the beginning of the movie before the film decided she had become truly herself (or something) her eyebrows were weirdly painted and misshapen. Then in later scenes when she's done her "true calling" (according to the film) her eyebrows look symmetrical and similar to the way Saldaña's eyebrows usually look. I'm not pointing this out to criticize anyone's eyebrows, but this movie decided to make this a Thing, which was very odd.

I also got some pretty heavy transphobic vibes in parts of this movie. And in other parts it felt relatively benign in its treatment of the trans character. This also gave it a weird old-fashioned and "operatic" kind of vibe to me. Not defending the transphobia, but it seemed they deliberately added it as part of the operatic aesthetic... to "heighten the drama" (again, not saying that it was successful in heightening anything, but that's what it seemed like the transphobic sections were there for).

I didn't like any of the music as songs, but the way the music was done in the film made the story feel operatic and old-fashioned. The trans story was portrayed almost as an operatic 'tragedy' or something?

Agreed that Gomez was the best part of the movie. But overall it was a mess and yes, I strongly believe that this got Oscar hype because one of the the main characters (and actress) is trans... but it's like the Oscar voters got that Memo then never bothered to actually watch the film.

Odd movie with a distinctive style (to my USA accustomed eyes and ears), but not really good.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:55 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]

Just watched Halloween Jack's (excellent - I subscribed) Jessie Gender video about this film: Apparently Gomez' Spanish in this film is atrocious as well. She said in interviews that she could have done better with her Spanish if she had the time (or if the producers had hired a dialect coach!). Apparently she does not speak Mexico City style Spanish, but the video points out that even some of th the idioms she uses are weird and out of place. And the big song she sings is almost impossible to understand!

I'll just make two final observations I had about this film: The very opening with the Mariachis and the xmas lights? The way this was woven into the rest of the beginning shots gave me a Shakespeare vibe. Shakespeare would have his plays set "in Fair Verona" and then hastily sketch out the exotic place and time the story was going to take place. Shakespeare didn't write the play in Italian or try to get realistic Italian accents from the actors either.

Maybe - MAYBE - that was part of the intention here... to set this in Mexico City, but not a realistic Mexico City. That may be a stretch, but much of this movie was deliberately stylized intentionally, then contrasted extremely harshly with a feeling of the real, contemporary world.

Last thing: My wife and I viewed the official trailer before deciding to watch this movie streaming. At the very beginning of the film's official trailer, the movie's director is not called the director. It says "From Renegade Auteur Jacques Audiard"

My eyes rolled so hard up into my skull I think I pulled a muscle. I guess I thought a lot about this movie even if I didn't think it was good.
posted by SoberHighland at 10:15 AM on February 6 [4 favorites]

The very opening with the Mariachis and the xmas lights? The way this was woven into the rest of the beginning shots gave me a Shakespeare vibe. Shakespeare would have his plays set "in Fair Verona" and then hastily sketch out the exotic place and time the story was going to take place. Shakespeare didn't write the play in Italian or try to get realistic Italian accents from the actors either.

Maybe - MAYBE - that was part of the intention here... to set this in Mexico City, but not a realistic Mexico City. That may be a stretch, but much of this movie was deliberately stylized intentionally, then contrasted extremely harshly with a feeling of the real, contemporary world.

From what I've read, this film was originally conceived as an opera, and was chalking the tone up to that. Not that it's that great, mind you - but I've also seen similarly cheeseball portrayals of a lot of other places like Ireland and New England in things like The Quiet Man or Darby O'Glll and The Little People or Carousel, and so while I wasn't thrilled I was also thinking "yeah, but nothing new, movies are gonna movie".

Honestly, the fact that it got a Best Picture nomination is literally the only reason I even saw it - I try to see all the best picture nominees each year. I'd otherwise have skipped it; I almost did, but it came free with Netflix so at least I wasn't spending additional money on it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:36 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

Maybe - MAYBE - that was part of the intention here... to set this in Mexico City, but not a realistic Mexico City.

I think that absolutely was Audiard's intention. He clearly did not care about getting the details or the vibe right at all. And honestly, that seemed kind of weird but fine — until the second half of the film. I think you can have a film that uses a very stylized version of Mexico or you can have a film that addresses the issue of disappeared people, but you just can't do both in one film. And if you have an extremely trite and schmaltzy treatment of this serious issue and you set that in your weird stylized Mexico, it comes across as a cheap and exploitative way to give your Oscar-bait film some pathos.

Apparently Gomez' Spanish in this film is atrocious as well. She said in interviews that she could have done better with her Spanish if she had the time (or if the producers had hired a dialect coach!). Apparently she does not speak Mexico City style Spanish, but the video points out that even some of th the idioms she uses are weird and out of place.

In the context of the film, she's not supposed to speak Spanish as a first language, so it's fine that she has an American accent and her words come out a little awkwardly at times (and I don't see why she should have a Mexico City accent). The problem is the way she puts together sentences and the words she chooses (i.e. what is written in the script for her character) don't match the level of language you'd expect her to have with the accent and slightly halting way of speaking. She uses constructions that someone at her level wouldn't and the slang and word choice is sometimes just weird (a lot of people have pointed out that "Hasta me duele la pinche vulva nada más de acordarme de ti" is hilarious for all the wrong reasons).

I'd think this would be a very hard thing to get right in a film (and doubly so if you were directing a film in a language that you yourself don't speak). But this was entirely an own-goal, Audiard could easily have hired someone Spanish-speaking instead. This is hardly the only weird language there is in the film though.
posted by ssg at 11:23 PM on February 10 [3 favorites]

Well, it's an odd one. The way some of the issues were jammed into the story made for a bumpy ride.

I actually liked the music, I thought it was superior to most generic Broadway to Hollywood style soundtrack mush. I also thought that Zoe Saldana was interesting in it.

I have no idea why this one was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards. Many films much more deserving than this get ignored often.
posted by ovvl at 7:18 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]

I'm not going to see this because life is short, etc. I also haven't seen a lot of Audiard's other work, but I have seen his Palme d'Or winner Dheepan. It's socially conscious and the lead character, an ex-Tamil Tiger, is actually played by a former child soldier from Sri Lanka. But man, it's weird how the second half of the movie is about how returning to violence solves his immediate problems. It felt exploitative to me, like using the tragedy of the Sri Lankan civil war as a plot point.

As noted above, there's a lack of intersectionality here. I'm getting my Francophone socially aware cinema from the Dardenne brothers, who do slip up now and again but who clearly think through the implications of their casting.
posted by Bryant at 11:18 AM on February 12