BEST PICTURE OSCAR REVIEW
My Official ‘Emilia Pérez’ Thoughts — A Better Film Exists Underneath It
Note: SPOILERS for Emilia Pérez.
It’s Oscars season, and as of writing, Academy voting has officially begun.
Until the Academy Awards on March 2, I will be reviewing every Best Picture nominee, which includes the highly-contested, 13-nomination earning Emilia Pérez.
This article won’t get into the off-screen drama going on with the film. I already spoke on it in a different article, which you can read here.
I will keep my thoughts entirely on the film itself, providing any outside context as needed. Note that all the thoughts here are my own opinions.
‘Emilia Pérez’ Summary
Emilia Pérez follows the titular character (Karla Sofia Gascón), a transgender drug cartel leader in Mexico who leaves her life of crime following her gender transition. She sends her family — wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and two sons — to live in Switzerland and fakes her own death to start her new life. Emilia does this all with the help of the criminal lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Zoë Saldaña), who she employs to find doctors who will provide Emilia with gender-affirming surgeries.
Four years pass, and Rita finds Emilia — now living her life as a woman — in a London restaurant. There, Emilia asks Rita to do her a favor and help return her family from Switzerland to Mexico City. There, they will live with Emilia, who will pose as the estranged cousin of her dead self — an aunt to her own children.
Emilia successfully reunites with her family and continues the charade of being Tía Emilia.
Meanwhile, in Mexico City, Emilia forms an NGO called “La Lucecita” (little light) with Rita that works to find the bodies of those missing due to cartel violence. The film presents it as a form of retribution for Emilia.
Time passes. Through La Lucecita, Emilia meets Epifanía (Adrianna Paz) and starts an intimate relationship with her. Meanwhile, Jessi reignites a former love affair with Gustavo (Edgar Ramírez) and eventually decides to marry him and move out of Emilia’s home, taking the kids with her.
This enrages Emilia, and she responds by cutting Jessi off monetarily and threatening her. Jessi and Gustavo respond by kidnapping Emilia and holding her ransom, cutting three fingers and sending them to Rita.
Rita takes a backup team to protect her and goes to find Emilia. A shootout occurs while Emilia reveals her identity to Jessi. Gustavo shuts Emilia in the trunk of his car and takes Jessi with him to drive away from the shootout. Jessi has an altercation with Gustavo, trying to stop him from kidnapping Emilia after knowing the truth about her…and the car careens off a cliff and explodes. Emilia Pérez is dead — bury the gays.
Rita sees the aftermath. Devastated, she tells Emilia’s sons about their parents’ death and arranges to be their guardian. Epifanía leads a eulogy march down the streets of Mexico City for Emilia with a saint-like statue in her likeness.
It’s a musical. It’s a tragicomedy — more tragic than comedic. It’s Emilia Pérez.
‘Emilia Pérez’ — My Review
Here we go.
I know that there’s been a lot of discussion about Emilia Pérez in which respected filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro and Denis Villeneuve have praised it, while a massive slew of other critics — notably Mexican and transgender people — have negatively criticized the film, noting elements such as poor writing, bad songs, and harmful, faux-progressive representation both for trans people and Mexico (particularly the handling of the drug cartel issues).
Given that this film is meant to represent transgender and Mexican communities, I will defer to them to support my opinions on the film’s handling of those subjects.
This film feels like a series of checkmarks made by people who were clearly dealing with issues out of their element, and it’s blatant. Mexican and Mexican-American critics site the absolutely awful Spanish in the film, the poor handling of the drug cartel conflict, racist elements in casting and portrayal of its Mexican characters, and the caricatured display of their country. See the reviews from John Paul Brammer and Ces Heredia for examples.
Transgender critics, like Jessie Gender and Vera Wylde on YouTube and the writers at GLAAD, go into the harmfully cisgender-centric viewpoint of seeing Emilia and the consistent return to her male self in the movie, noting how Emilia Pérez treats Emilia more like someone who can never be a woman instead of a woman living her truth. Notably, Emilia shows little agency in the extremely personal and extensive journey of her transition, treating it instead like a list of errands she gives to a cis woman (for the cis woman to decide on her behalf). From that, Emilia Pérez treats Emilia’s transition and body as an exhibition. Woah…wow…trans bodies…
Yet while I share those issues with the film, there are some big picture things about Emilia Pérez that needed to have been fixed.
The Bigger Issues
I was genuinely interested in the idea of exploring what it would be like to be a transgender woman leading a Mexican drug cartel ring, then taking her transition as an opportunity to redeem herself from her crimes. Unfortunately, Emilia Pérez doesn’t seem to think the same, as everything in this film felt surface-level in its handling (which contributes to its poor representation).
It is missing two key things:
- Consistent themes to anchor the film;
- Characters with clear motives and wants, with stakes to not meeting them and obstacles against getting them.
Look at the elements that Emilia Pérez seemingly wants to explore: identity. The relationship between one’s past and present. Fully realizing oneself. Issues of the drug cartel wars in Mexico. That’s essentially what I gathered.
Now, look at the main characters: Rita, Emilia, and Jessi.
What does Rita want? Todo y Nada gives the impression that she wants to move up in her career as a lawyer and, perhaps, build a family someday.
What does Jessi want? She wants to untether herself from her dead husband (not realizing Emilia’s truth) and move on with her life.
And what does Emilia want? To transition…and then to, I think, return to her family while also moving on from her cartel life. Okay. Let’s unpack all of this.
To do so, I rewrote the plot of Emilia Pérez to address all of this. It won’t be Oscar-worthy, but let’s roll with it. Read if you wish. It’s been stuck in my mind.
The Rewrite
First, the film establishes Emilia as the undisputed focus. She is a respected drug cartel leader whose life is violent due to the drug wars. There are other synthetic drug cartel factions. There are police and military forces fighting Emilia’s cartel. She has not transitioned yet. This is her masculine life. This is her initial “normal,” the starting point in the film for her growth. But in the meantime, show that this world is not meant to be Mexico’s normal. The cartel world is this dark underbelly of an otherwise fully-realized, rich culture.
Rita is not a criminal lawyer in this instance — it didn’t make sense for her to be one anyway. In this version, she’s a detective agent, or some such role that is fighting the cartels and has had a run-in with Emilia herself. She is Emilia’s villain — for now.
We find out that Emilia is secretly struggling with a clashing of worlds — she is a closeted transgender woman who became a cartel leader to lead a hyper-masculinized life and deny her truth. However, she has been easing the pain of dysphoria and seeking gender affirmation treatments. How long she can live this secret, though, is beyond her. She yearns to live her truth and get out of this horrible, masculine world. This would be a great moment for a song. This is her want.
In comes Emilia’s obstacle when her cartel finds out about her gender-affirming treatments. Knowing that she is getting involved with a process that involves disclosing her life in extreme detail to doctors (coupled with some machismo misogyny/transphobia), the cartel turns on her and puts her life in danger. There’s a chase, and Emilia goes down a cliff into some bushes, or a river…something obscuring. She escapes from the car before it explodes. The cartel thinks she’s dead. But now, Emilia has clear stakes. She cannot return to the cartel. And now, she has to transition as quickly as possible to a.) reach her want of living her truth and b.) keep the cartel from finding her.
Emilia transitions, with the film handling it in a much more representative way to the transgender experience than a trans-medicalist fantasy in which some invasive surgery procedures done at once turn her into a woman in a day. Emilia begins living her truth as a woman. Relief. And in a way, safety.
But in comes another obstacle. The police forces arrest Emilia — they know about her past. Eventually, Emilia’s old cartel finds out — is this Emilia lady someone they know? They don’t think she’s their old cartel boss — but word is that this Emilia woman was arrested for leading a Mexican synthetic drug ring around Monterrey. That’s weird…
Awaiting trial, Emilia meets Rita. They discuss. Emilia tells Rita about escaping the cartel, and why she wants to do it — here could be a song talking about the masculine role of the cartel, how she cannot live that life, and how she cannot go back. Notice, too, how the film is now reinforcing the notion of her transition being inward and identity-focused and not mostly physical and bodily-focused. Here is also an assertion of the theme of finding one’s identity, and how it connects with our actions and roles.
Through the song, Rita becomes slowly convinced that Emilia really does want to leave the cartel life behind her and proposes a solution: work for the police to track down these cartel gangs and stop this violence, and earn a commuted sentence.
Now Emilia is faced with a new conflict: go down a potentially redemptive road — but be a rat and get into more danger — or stay quiet and serve the jail time. In a song, Emilia works it out and chooses the rat life.
Next, see Emilia Pérez and Rita kicking some cartel ass — again, in a way that treats the real Mexican conflict with care. Emilia reveals secrets, names, information. Years pass, her trial happens, and she serves her time. Out of prison, she becomes more involved with the forces stopping the cartels. She’s on the opposite side now.
See Emilia growing as a person, as a woman. See the parallels of Emilia living her authentic life as a woman and the authentic life of serving law and order for the greater good, compared to the false life of living as a man in the shadows of crime. And see how this is reflected through her relationship with Rita — once Emilia’s enemy, now her close friend and sidekick in crime. See the themes. See the wants and stakes. See the character growth.
Meanwhile, see the B-Plot of the cartel noticing the mysterious Emilia woman rise in the ranks of taking cartel gangs down — she’s a threat. She and Rita, the one who was always a villain to us. We have to take them down, both. And how?
Towards the end of the film, the climax: Rita is kidnapped by Emilia Pérez’s old cartel. Now Emilia’s on a mission to rescue her friend.
Emilia then faces her cartel. Now the ultimate showdown.
Here is Emilia versus the cartel gang. The detective life is Emilia’s progressive-moving feminine life, and the cartel life is her regressive-moving masculine life. Hell, the gang even forced her in the “male” role of this damsel-in-distress situation with Rita. Furthermore, by trying to find out who Emilia is, the gang (unintentionally) tries to reinforce her past as a man, justifying it as her “true” identity. Emilia must end this notion. She must kill this cartel connection once and for all in her life.
Emilia realizes this. She is officially ready to be over with the whole cartel world. Before, a part of her was still connected to it because of her mission of retribution.
With the help of armed backup forces, Emilia kills off her former cartel subordinates and saves Rita.
Then the falling action of the story. Fin.
Review — Continued
Is my version the definitively correct way to tell the Emilia Pérez story? No. But let’s notice what needed to happen and why:
Emilia Pérez tackles a lot of dense, sensitive subjects. Let’s have a focus. Let’s have a mission, a message. Nothing should be ham-fisted. Character motivations and traits need to be earned and established.
We can’t have Rita singing about how “changing the soul changes society” without any perspective on her feelings about the situation she’s in with Emilia. What are her views towards the job Emilia gave her? Doesn’t it clash with her values? What does Rita feel?
And forget how we see no obstacles to Emilia’s wants.
She wants to finish her gender transition? She hires a compliant criminal lawyer, who finds a doctor that has a non-challenging meeting with her and gives her the Gender Transition Special(TM) in the hospital — boom.
She wants to fake her death? Her “death” happens offscreen and her family goes to Switzerland — boom.
She wants her family back in the scene essentially right after? Her family comes back to Mexico — boom.
Emilia gets a flyer of a missing person? Oh yeah, she did some bad things. In comes an effortless creation of an NGO, while no one questions her past, and the people parade her statue in the street because she helped find the dead bodies of their loved ones (whose deaths she contributed to). Boom.
Oh, fine. Let’s add some conflict. Jessi feels frustrated in her life and makes Emilia angry when she wants to…you know…move on with it. Let’s tack the main part of that conflict at the end. Booooommmmm.
Do the songs do anything to establish these wants? Not really. They feel like unfinished non sequiturs that show side-wants for characters.
Rita needs to find a doctor for Emilia (for some unestablished, “rushed” reason) — “La Vaginoplastia” takes her through the McDonald’s Value Menu of gender affirming surgeries at an irrelevant magical wonderland clinic in Bangkok. Boom.
Rita thinks there’s corruption in politics and the drug cartel issue: how do we know? “El Mal” tells us this. And “El Alegato” establishes themes of shadiness in the criminal prosecution world. Besides that, nothing else! Boom.
Concluding Thoughts
This is Oscar bait in the purest sense, and the Academy took it hook, line, and sinker.
Is Emilia Pérez the worst movie I’ve seen? No. It’s not even the most boring film.
However, this film feels like the most blatant example of Hollywood trying to sniff their own farts and insist to the world that they care about social issues, while praising a movie that tackles these issues in the most shallow way possible. Their praises could not be more deafening over the legitimate concerns of transgender people, Mexican people, and general audiences who know what makes films good.
What Emilia Pérez hopefully did is help raise the standards of trans representation to filmmakers by showing what not to do…again.
Furthermore, the critics’ voices help assert that casting a trans woman as the leading trans character is not an automatic hall pass to reinforce harmful transgender attitudes.
Yet while the politics of this movie can’t help but be intertwined with it, that’s not the film’s biggest issue.
It’s the storytelling. These characters hardly feel real to me. I didn’t care about their wants and motivations. They didn’t have any problems to solve, aside from a shoehorned rescue plot at the very end.
And as forced as the messaging in this movie felt politically at times, all it did was cheapen the reality of the issues presented in the film because it didn’t commit and establish clear themes and messages.
This movie was a French crew playing Mexican dress-up. Then, combined with their own hubris and the Dunning-Kruger effect over the subject matter, they didn’t know how to put the parts well together.
To that, adiós, Emilia Pérez.
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