With four Golden Globes awards and 13 Oscar nominations including Best Picture, one would expect “Emilia Pérez” to be a thought-provoking musical about transgender experiences. However, this is completely incorrect. “Emilia Pérez,” directed by Jacques Audiard, a cis-gender French man who doesn’t speak Spanish, is a disjointed and offensive portrayal of the lived experiences of trans individuals. Hiding under the pretense of “progress,” this film is full of cliches and harmful tropes.
Every single aspect of this film falls short — the poor writing, dialogue, lighting, choreography, and especially the songs, which don’t make up for its dissatisfactory story.
“Emilia Pérez” depicts the life of a cartel leader, Emilia Pérez, portrayed by Karla Sofía Gascón. Emilia embarks on a journey of transition by hiring a lawyer named Rita (Zoe Saldaña), who helps her secretly seek gender-affirming care. The film plays on trans stereotypes and implies that the only way to fully transition is through intensive, expensive plastic surgery. Emilia had been taking estrogen for two years before meeting Rita. But despite this, her soul had not been changed (a repetitive premise throughout this film).
Rita consults with two doctors in Bangkok and Tel Aviv to begin the steps towards Emilia’s transition. These consultations were both musical numbers. First, we hear “La Vaginoplastia,” a poorly written song that comes off as satire with its lines such as “man to women, from penis to vagina.” In Tel Aviv, we hear “Lady,” which is full of inaccuracies and stereotypes.
Rita delivers the line, “Changing the body changes society, changing society changes the soul, changing the soul changes society, changing society changes it all.” Not only is this confusing and just blatantly bad writing, but we once again hear the message that if you don’t undergo surgeries, you haven’t “fully” transitioned. Your soul remains unchanged.
Not every trans person has the financial means or opportunity to undergo multiple surgeries. Emilia Pérez can afford these surgeries with the dirty money she earned from her time in the cartel. This movie creates unnecessary pressure to alter one’s physical appearance to be valid in their gender identity, ignoring the diverse experiences of trans individuals.
After undergoing the surgeries, Emilia Pérez fakes her own death to escape her troubled past with the cartel and leaves her wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and two kids behind. This plot device not only absolves Emilia from all of her moral wrongdoings but is a rhetorical device to imply that when you transition, your pre-transition life is dead.
Alongside the movie’s message of “rebirth,” Emilia decides to make up for her past and start an organization to find the bodies of missing people. The movie likes to make you conveniently forget her terrible actions of the past because that version of herself is dead. Emilia Pérez ran a cartel. She was responsible for the deaths of individuals, yet the movie decides to gloss over that fact and forgive Emilia for her actions.
The plot decides to take a dramatic turn when it is revealed that Jessi is marrying a man named Gustavo (Édgar Ramírez). Emilia, out of fear that she will no longer be able to see her children, aggressively demands Jessi stay with her and physically assaults her.
Until this point in the movie, Emilia had moved on from her violent past and expressed guilt, yet the film ignores that entire subplot and Emilia returns to her abusive and manipulative past.
Completely out of left field, Emilia is kidnapped by Jessi and Gustavo. Jessi attempts to stop the kidnapping by holding Gustavo at gunpoint while he is driving. They then steer off a cliff, destroying the car. Then in a hilariously Spongebob-like manner, the car explodes for seemingly no reason.
After Emilia dies, the community praises her contributions to finding missing people’s dead bodies while conveniently leaving out any mention of her abusive tendencies or past affiliations with the cartel.
This movie is not only objectively horrible, but it holds dangerous stereotypes labeled as “progress.” The harmful narratives presented about trans identities and who is considered to be “fully trans” are insulting misrepresentations. This film is not about uplifting trans voices or stories, it is a cis-gendered facade suitable for ill-informed audiences. Its positive critical reception only goes to show how subtle transphobia is still a problem in Hollywood.
