with 13 Academy Award nominationsThe — take a deep breath — French-made, Netflix-distributed, Mexican trance-narco music ”Emilia Perez” History was made Thursday morning.
It is the most nominated non-English-language film of all time, the third Spanish-language production to receive a Best Picture nod, and surpasses the original “West Side Story” for the most Academy Award nominations of any film about Latinos.
Carla Sofia Gascon – plays the titular macho drug lord turned feisty woman – She is the first openly transgender woman to be nominated in any Oscar acting category. Zoe Saldana, nominated for best supporting actress, has already won a Golden Globe and a Cannes acting award for her performance as Rita Mora Castro, Emilia's accomplished lawyer on tour — which A first major prize for the shyly underrated actor. Jacques Audiard was also nominated for Best Director.
The accolades come despite controversy surrounding “Emilia Perez” as one of its musical numbers.
Mexican intellectuals have accused the film of reducing the country's horrific drug wars – which have left more than 100,000 people missing and killed nearly half a million people this century alone – to a song-and-dance farce. GLAAD described it “Deeply Regressive Portrayal of a Transgender Woman.”
In a podcast, superstar Mexican comic Eugenio Derbez mocked the accent of Selena Gomez, the Mexican-American who plays Emilia's wife, as “indefensible”, for which she later apologized. Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto told Deadline that the film was “totally unreliable” because there weren't enough Mexicans in front of and behind the camera.
There has been so much excitement Audiard He went on CNN en Español last week and said he was “sorry” if viewers found his movie “shocking.”
The movies and TV shows about Mexico's cartels never end, so I had no plans to watch “Emilia Perez” in the beginning. The buzz, good and bad, made me want to finally stream the film. As someone Monitors portrayals of Mexicans in cinema From my days majoring in film studies at Chapman University, I've Got To Do: All the Oscar attention will make this one of the most important films about the Mexican condition in recent memory.
I understand Prieto and Terbes' points Freyza (snooty) Ditto. Accents are all over the place, and Mexican Spanish is not always accurate (the correct word for prison in Mexico PenitentiaryFor example, no Carcel) Audiard reduces Mexico City, one of the world's largest cities, to a series of interiors and taco stalls—unsurprisingly, he shot his film mostly on sound stages in France.
I can see why GLAAD was so upset with the French director, but he made a decision as personal as turning the best television show, “My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” into a straight segment with bandaged patients screaming “vaginoplasty.” and “Phenoplasty!”
The dialogue isn't particularly memorable, the English subtitles are largely off, the songs are forgettable (though two of them won Oscars) and the few straight Mexican men who appear — stop me if you've heard this before — are corrupt, oversexed, or ultra violet. I have no problem with a non-Mexican director making a film about the country and its people, but at least root for the essence, you know?
Elevating “Emilia Perez” are powerhouse performances from Saldana, Gascon, Gomez and Mexican actress Adriana Paz, who plays Emilia's love interest. As defenders say, it made me watch against the hope that the film would bring something new to the narco genre.

Zoe Saldaña, left, Selena Gomez and Karla Sofia Gascón from the movie “Emilia Perez” during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival where Gascón and Saldaña are nominated for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscars, respectively.
(Jason Armand/Los Angeles Times)
The choice of musical form is not shameful. The best musicals, whether on stage or screen, use their fantastical trappings to address contemporary events and issues—think morality plays on race and class.”Wicked“Or through the French Revolution”Les Miserables.” One of the most distorted fictional critiques of the American Dream is “The Song.”Remember my forgotten man” and the accompanying compilation in Busby Berkeley’s “Gold Diggers of 1933”. One of the most hilarious responses to Nazism remains “The Producers” by Mel Brooks.
“Emilia Perez” thinks it's in that transgressive tradition. Instead, it turns out like every other narco movie. Audiard, who insisted that his modern-day opera break stereotypes about Mexicans, is a bad one at a point when “Emilia Perez” — the film and the character — must find its heart.
Halfway through the movie, Rita and Emilia are enjoying food at an outdoor market when a woman hands them a flyer with a photo of her son who disappeared years ago. Emilia confesses that she regrets the part she played in killing so many people and throwing Mexico into perpetual chaos. Rita urges her boss to do something. The two set up a system to help find the remains Los Desaparecidos – The missing – and sparks a moral revolution.
Audiard sees their efforts as an unprecedented breakthrough for Mexico, which is not the case. People have been doing this work for a long time and will continue to do so even after the hype of the film dies down. At the risk of their lives, they, along with the journalists, put their names – something that “Emilia Perez” would not dare to do.
In an interview with CNN en EspañolAudiard admitted that he was not interested in portraying Mexico as it really was, saying, “If I had to choose between myth and reality, I'd rather write the legend” — parroting John Ford's famous decision in “The Man Who.” Shot Liberty Valance”
It's a shame to cover up real-life anti-narco activists, topped only by the farcical, ludicrous finale. Spoiler alert: Skip the next paragraph if you don't want to know how it ends.
A crowd sings of how Emilia “worked a miracle/turned into gold” and parades her statue through the streets dressed as the Virgin Mary with arms outstretched.
In the end, “Emilia Perez” is a likable “Mrs. Suspicion” that replaces humor and genius with hubris and guns. No wonder the film won several Oscars: Academy members want their cinema to be the grim hell of Mexico's salvation and a reminder to change its wrong ways. , which goes back to the days of Manifest Destiny.
Poor Mexico: So Far From God, So Close To Hollywood.