After being awarded two Academy Awards and receiving 13 nominations, the 2024 film “Emilia Pérez” has faced intense scrutiny. Though the Academy was impressed by the film and awarded it with “Best Original Song” and “Best Supporting Actress” titles, we ultimately feel Mexican culture and transgender identities were used as performative diversity in the movie. While we are glad to see stories about marginalized identities, we believe the film lacks the accurate portrayals the audience deserves to see on the big screen in 2025.
The plot of the movie follows Karla Sofía Gascón’s character, Mexican cartel boss Emilia Pérez, who fakes her death to escape violence. To do so, Pérez medically transitions genders with the help of her lawyer. Immediately, the plot raised red flags for many LGBTQ+ activists. Despite Gascón making history as the first openly transgender actress to be nominated at the Oscars, GLAAD published a compilation of critiques, calling the film a “step backward for trans representation.” We couldn’t agree more.
While the story technically centers around a transgender woman, it depicts Pérez as someone who is transitioning for monetary gain and escape from her past life. This representation does not at all align with the complex relationship between self expression and gender identity actually experienced by transgender people. It felt as if those behind the camera in “Emilia Pérez” didn’t properly research or familiarize themselves with real trans experiences. That, or they simply did not care enough to portray the experience accurately.
We feel the film’s surface-level and stereotypical depiction of the transgender community should have been enough to take it out of Academy Award consideration; but the controversy doesn’t end there. The film also depicts Mexican culture in a harmful and stereotypical manner. While crime is an issue for all countries, it is especially prevalent in stereotypes of Mexican culture. It is disappointing that a film made to highlight Mexican culture reverts back to displaying such a stereotypical, crime-centered portrayal of Mexico.
In response to this criticism, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard actually admitted that he hadn’t done much research on Mexico before creating the film. This disconnect between Audiard and the communities he was attempting to depict has become a major issue to many Mexican viewers, who felt the film was not a proper portrayal. As viewers and journalists (a profession in the extended family of filmmakers) we can’t understand why Audiard failed to conduct proper research, especially since he is not part of the Mexican or transgender communities.
During Zoe Saldaña’s acceptance speech for “Best Supporting Actress” she graciously acknowledged Mexican culture and passionately spoke Spanish, which seemed to highlight the importance of the film’s setting. However, Saldaña’s response to a confrontation by a journalist who found the movie “really hurtful for us Mexicans” immediately afterwards gave a different narrative.
She offered a blanket apology to those who felt offended, but discredited it by saying, “I don’t share your opinion. For me, the heart of this movie was not Mexico. We weren’t making a film about a country, we were making a film about four women.”
By dismissing criticism, Saldaña’s reply illuminates our key issue with “Emilia Pérez.” The film used both transgender and Mexican identities as a mask to receive praise, not caring to create genuine portrayals.
Further, neither of the actresses’ acceptance speeches mentioned the transgender community, despite the basis of the plot spotlighting a trans woman. The speeches instead centered the portrayal of women, and the movie’s songwriters awkwardly sang the name Emilia over and over again for an uncomfortably long time.
If this wasn’t enough to sink the film’s reputation, multiple Islamophobic and racist posts resurfaced from Gascón’s social media account on X, formerly known as Twitter. This led Gascón to issue an apology and, promptly, delete her X account. On top of our preexisting criticism, this development further creates a negative image of “Emilia Pérez” and its cast.
All in all, we find “Emilia Pérez” had the potential to be a beacon moment of representation for marginalized communities; but it was, ultimately, a trainwreck of a film. The work was created by a white, cisgender French man who knew nothing about the complexity of the transgender and Mexican identities that he was portraying, and it comes across in the film. Instead, the director exploited both topics to receive critical praise under the guise of representation.
We wish we could celebrate successful and authentic Mexican and trans representation in the award-winning movie; unfortunately, we feel “Emilia Perez” fell entirely flat of any impactful representation. We remain hopeful that future filmmakers will take note moving forward, and craft better, thoroughly researched and thoughtful representations of marginalized groups in cinema.