Split Decision: “Emilia Pérez”
Monday, February 17, 2025 at 5:00PM
In the Split Decision series, two (or three) of our writers face off on an Oscar-nominated movie one loves and the other doesn't. Today, Nick Taylor, Lynn Lee, and Juan Carlos Ojano discuss Emilia Pérez...
NICK TAYLOR: Hello, Lynn and Juan Carlos! I’m really excited to start our conversation on Emilia Pérez, surely the most divisive of this year’s Oscar contenders. I am entering this talk as our resident hater - I admire the nutty swings this movie is taking, though very little of that admiration extends to how those nutty swings are executed by Jacques Audiard and his collaborators. Still, I wanna hear what makes the movie work for you guys, or at least makes these experiments worthwhile. Lynn, as the person in this conversation who likes Emilia Pérez the most, do you wanna take the baton?
LYNN LEE: Haha, is it even safe to admit you like Emilia Pérez these days?...
Whenever I look at the online discourse for this movie I feel like I'm in a tiny minority of viewers who didn't loathe it and an even tinier minority of viewers who actually enjoyed it. At the same time, how do you explain its wild success with awards bodies? Here's a third data point: among the friends I've polled, who like movies but aren't obsessive about them to the degree we are, everyone who's seen it has given it positive marks. Make of that what you will.
As for me personally, my first immediate post-viewing reaction was: that was wild. That was a lot. Maybe too much? But I couldn't deny it successfully held me in its grip during its entire roller-coaster ride without ever making me want to get off. It felt less like a musical than a straight-up, full-tilt opera; only later did I learn that it was in fact originally conceived as an opera, which checks. And at least at the (melo)dramatic level (I have mixed feelings on the music), I think it works as an operatic tragedy about someone who strives to redefine her identity but ultimately can't escape her core character traits. (In this respect, the film has a weird thematic consonance with the otherwise very, uh, different A Different Man.) We can get to how well or poorly that struggle comports with her being trans; but as a character drama, I found it compelling.
Juan Carlos, what say you? I take it your feelings are in the "it's complicated" category?
JUAN CARLOS OJANO: Complicated it is. To your point, Lynn, I watch almost everything with my mom and she really liked this film too.
I have asserted multiple times in the past that I'd rather see a film that makes big swings and misses than watch something that fares okay but doesn't have any real stakes at all. I would care less if it turns out to be a mess as long as it breathes with life and finds truth along the way. I want to see that personality, that auteurial stamp. Those are the kinds of stories that push the medium forward. I want to feel the unpredictability of the art and still know I'm in the sure hands of a master. And yet, I want those swings justified and with purpose. Even if I don't agree with them, I want to see why we're doing this in the first place. Audacity without reason only results in hollow nothingness.
That's where my conundrum with Emilia Pérez lies. It being an admittedly exciting, if occasionally headache-inducing, mess was not the problem for me. For the exciting explosion of "El Mal", you also get the benign sappiness of "Papa". For Adriana Paz's disarming specificity in characterization through small moments, you also get Selena Gomez struggling to piece together a coherent human being (and the writing doesn't help her at all). Okay, fine, whatever. What I'm missing is the intentionality. Why is the film told this way? Why these stylistic choices?
Take the much ridiculed "La Vaginoplastia" sequence. For the gross misunderstanding (or perhaps, deliberate disinterest) of gender confirmation surgery, at least it comes off as committed in its absurdity. Bad taste? Probably, but at least sticks with its guns and goes with it. It's outrageously ridiculous and it presents it as such. For the majority of the film, the film postures itself as an act of renegade art but sans the meat to back it up. Was the film actively engaging with bad taste or was it just unintentionally bad? I still don't know, but I'm fascinated by this trainwreck regardless... even if it left me with an aftertaste.
Nick, how was your actual experience while watching it? And perhaps, afterwards as well?
NICK: I was pretty gobsmacked by Emilia Pérez both times I’ve watched it. Yes, it does throw a lot at you, but what surprises me most is how so many of the narrative and stylistic limbs it goes on feel really under explored. To give one example, I'd have loved to spend more time digging into Emilia's humanitarian quest to exhume all these bodies interred by the cartels. Give her a dialogue where she explicitly reckons with her responsibility for this situation, make the supposed threat from the cartels into something tangible, follow up on the potential conflicts brought up in “El Mal”. But it gets kinda dropped when Adriana Paz shows up, and her romance subplot gets kinda dropped after their one big song. And so on and so forth.
Maybe the issue is that I never got a sense of what the baseline sense of tone and style should be. What counts as a flourish if we’re never settled on what this world looks and sounds like? I like some of the stylized, subjective lighting choices, like when Rita realizes who her sparkling new dinner friend is and the whole room goes dark except for those two. One of the few scenes that made the film work formally as a musical. And I agree about the weird fun of the “Vaginoplasty” number, which has some silly glitz and hospital-gurney choreo going on. But we get also smatterings of music video montage, direct-to-camera address, all these different touches that, no matter how effective they might be, ultimately feel haphazard brushing up against each other.
Lynn, I completely agree about the movie feeling more like an opera than a regular musical. This wants to be high drama, though I think the comparison also highlights what makes it flail for me. I really did not like it as a musical, and I don’t think anyone in front of or behind the camera really made that decision coherent for me. The lyrics, the score, the performing of those songs, none of it worked for me as theatre. Was there a single theme for any of these characters? I couldn’t stand the talk-singing, which felt like a directorial choice given to the cast. This isn’t the aspect of the film I’m most sour about, but I feel crazy when people praise it as a musical. Did it work better for you, Lynn?
LYNN: Better, yes, but as I noted, not without reservations. I didn't mind the talk-singing, and I thought the musical numbers were effective overall at advancing the narrative, though I agree they were stylistically a bit all over the place. My main issue, dovetailing with your complaint, Nick, is that they were mostly so short they felt truncated. I wish they'd been given more room to breathe and develop, which in turn would have helped slow down and add depth to some of the whoa-nelly rapid-fire character and plot turns. I'll note that when I expressed this frustration to the friend I saw the film with - who liked it a lot - she compared it to Evita, though I don't remember Evita being quite so hurried or frenetic. And at least it had some belters for extra dramatic punctuation, whereas here too many of the numbers felt more like teasers. The two exceptions were "El Mal" (which I quite liked) and, yes, "Vaginoplasty," which I really hope no one was actually taking seriously as an accurate representation of gender-affirmation surgery; I just thought it was meant to be amusing, while simultaneously underscoring the immensity of the change. Perhaps that just highlights my own ignorance or lack of sensitivity, and yet I'm pretty sure I'm not the only viewer who had that reaction.
But this raises the overall double elephant in the room - the representation of trans identity and of Mexico by filmmakers who were total outsiders to both worlds. It's hard to pick which of these aspects has drawn the most ire, and as someone who's also neither trans nor Mexican I feel singularly ill qualified to opine on either. All I can say is that I at no point treated Emilia Pérez - or Emilia Pérez - as representative of either experience, any more than I treat Carmen as a reliable portrayal of gypsies or 19th century Spain. (Not, mind you, to imply Emilia Pérez is at the same artistic level as Carmen - sorry, Bizet!) A fair counter-argument might be that Audiard, Camille, et al. should have done more diligence and demonstrated more sensitivity towards both communities, particularly considering how much hatred and ignorance are aimed at both - sadly now more than ever. At the same time, I didn't really see this film as fanning any of those prejudices; if anything, I thought it was empathetic towards both Emilia and the people she hurt so deeply, even in her efforts at atonement.
What do you guys think? Is your distaste for the film purely aesthetic, or is it colored by concerns about authenticity and/or appropriation?
JUAN CARLOS: I wish it was only aesthetic, to be honest. I agree, Lynn: the quality of the musical numbers are scattershot as heck. For example, I think the talk-singing in "Por Casualidad" worked because it is character-driven and Audiard chose to focus squarely on Gascón and Saldaña. At that moment, I had hope that maybe the film would find the sense to control its stylistic faculties. But then you get "Mi Camino", a musical number that is stodgily staged, bafflingly captured, and musically baffling. (But I won't pretend I can't sing along to it.) Cinematography and the editing is also thoroughly inconsistent; there are moments where I fully get what it's going for and I love the kineticism, but then there are moments (sometimes, in the same scene) where the same kineticism becomes a liability. It's stupefying how this film sends me to a whiplash multiple times, aesthetically speaking.
Perhaps my biggest problems come with its themes and representation. I'm not trans and I'm not Mexican so I wouldn't be able to speak of the actual weight of the misrepresentation that the film allegedly depicts, but I'm gonna go with what I know as a longtime appreciator of world cinema. I don't have to understand every cultural nuance to appreciate a film; that's just how cultural differences work. But I need to find authenticity. Depth. Specificity. Empathy. Truth. This film is obnoxiously broad. It takes these issues - Mexico's drug cartel problem, human rights violations, culpability/impunity, a person's ability (or not) to change, and the trans experience - mixes them together, throws them in one scene, and then neglects it in the other. Does Audiard even care about these things? Or did he just use these topics to throw a smorgasbord of clashing ingredients to serve his "art"?
But despite me detailing the things that I despise about this film, I also don't want to disregard the things that I liked. The actresses - bless their hearts - don't get help from the script at all (and sometimes, even from the direction), but they do their best. I've always thought Gascón has a fascinating screen presence (even before vile tweets resurfaced). Saldaña works hard in bringing to life what is basically an audience surrogate character that the film is guilty of using just to push the narrative forward. Gomez can't seem to resist how the script pigeonholes her character, but she's committing to it regardless. I've already talked about Paz, one of the few parts of this film that found specificity in her work.
After saying all of those things, I can still say this film interests me as heck. I've even memorized "El Mal". Nick, were there any highlights for you? Or let me change it up: did you happen to love and hold onto anything in this film?
NICK: I really like Adriana Paz’s performance. It’s a great, surprising meet-cute, and one of the film’s best scenes at juggling multiple tones. I love the sheer nuttiness of the women flashing their concealed weapons at each other from across the facility as if no one could possibly notice Emilia waving a handgun from her office window. That’s the kind of ridiculous yet humanizing gesture I wanted more of from Emilia Pérez. Paz is such a lively, energetic embodiment of redemptive goodness, and she’s by far the best singer of the cast. “El Amor” isn’t a standout number, but the actors really pour their hearts into it - I wish we’d spent more time watching her and Emilia romance each other.
Other compliments, other compliments. I second Juan Carlos on “Por Casualidad” being fairly well-staged, and would extend that sentiment to “Para”. Emilia’s song where she tells her doctor why she needs to transition was also very affecting, though I wish we’d gotten it a little earlier. In the purest abstract, I admire the genre-busting insanity going on here, and I sincerely hope this breaks some kind of barriers for trans and Mexican filmmakers who are actually making good art to get the resources and recognition they deserve. This is perhaps not a compliment, but I am fascinated by what this movie is saying about motherhood, and in imagining this whole enterprise as a design to give Rita the kids she states she’s always wanted every forty or so minutes.
I agree with pretty much everything Juan Carlos said about the film’s aesthetic deficiencies. It’s perplexing because up until now I’d considered Audiard very gifted as a pulp stylist and director of actors. Those instincts fail him utterly here. Frankly, I resent some of the discourse around Audiard’s direction being reduced to “he’s not from there, of course it’s bad!!” when countless artists have made really insightful work about cultures that aren’t their own, but his dismissive statements about not really studying Mexican culture before shooting are so clearly manifest in Emilia Pérez. At least he’s not adding more caricatured gestures (though the mariachi band and the platoon of cleaning ladies fit the bill) or applying the classic yellow filter, but you’d think a musical set in Mexico about Mexican characters would incorporate some Mexican music and choreography in the songs. Instead the scenarios are overly broad and the cultural specificity is nonexistent.
Re: the queer stuff. Lynn, you’re right about how silly the “Vaginoplasty” number is, and I extend that sentiment to how the film regards gender and sexuality in general. Transitioning felt like the most melodramatic way to dramatize this character turning over a new leaf. There’s something quite lovely to the shot of Emilia sitting up in her hospital bed, back to the camera, as she says her name for the first time. This movie doesn’t know how hormones work at all, but given how little it knows about most things I’m not gonna be super hung up about it.
I have been hogging the virtual mic for a while! Lynn, what elements of Emilia Pérez have stood out most for you since watching it, for better or worse?
LYNN: For me, Emilia Pérez is all about the three main actresses; it wouldn't work if they weren't 100% committed. But they are, which makes it much easier to overlook the flaws you both quite fairly point out. Saldaña slays, so hard that for at least the first half of the film her Rita feels like its true heart and is certainly its chief protagonist; only once Emilia (re)surfaces in her life does she recede into observer and supporting mode. For the latter reason I'm less inclined than some to call category fraud on her Oscar nod - and yet the fact that it feels like category fraud is a testament to the vibrancy of her performance. It's a pity her character's development basically gets cut off, reduced to the occasional perfunctory reference to her loneliness, before saddling her abruptly with surrogate motherhood, even though she hasn't really shown any notable maternal instincts. Still, Saldaña rises above these limitations to perfectly evoke the jaded, hypercompetent woman who finds meaning - for good or ill - in trying to help redeem another. I'm also a fan of Selena Gomez in this; maybe her Spanish and her character's psychology aren't the most coherent, but she hits all the right emotional notes and shows more range than one might expect from her deadpan affect in Only Murders in the Building.
As for Gascón. As for Gascón. She certainly hasn't been doing herself or the film any favors lately, to put it mildly, but that doesn't change the fact that she's still a hella magnetic presence in it. Even in Emilia's pre-op phase, buried under a ludicrous amount of makeup and prosthetics, she conveys both the fear "Manitas" evokes and the sense that it's all an act, almost a parody - and, beneath it all, the longing to be someone else. Post-op Emilia is a revelation of glamour and newfound self-assurance, only for that surface, too, to eventually erode as she discovers she hasn't and can't fully shed the legacy of Manitas - or even his darker qualities.
This leads to what I find at once most fascinating and most troubling about the film as a whole. Nick, I think you're right on the mark that it's about transitioning for thematic expediency, if you will - because transitioning is the most extreme and dramatic vehicle for transformation our society can currently contemplate. And yet the central tension is the question of what is Emilia's "true" identity - who is she, really, at her core? is she seeking to become a new person or the person that she was all along? does she even have a core identity? All this goes beyond gender dysphoria, but also risks exploiting transition by turning it into a (perhaps ill-fitting) metaphor for something else. Would the movie have worked as well or better if it were just about, say, a crime boss who got facial reconstructive surgery to look like a different man (or woman)? And here I come full circle back to A Different Man, which in its own weird interrogation of whether "transformation" can only be skin-deep suggests yes, there was an alternate path to exploring these themes that could have been just as interesting. But it wouldn't have been Emilia Pérez, in all its wild, disjointed (soap) operatic, quasi-telenovela-esque glory. You have to admit there's never been a movie quite like this, even if you also hope there will never be another.
JUAN CARLOS: I certainly hope there won't be anything like this again - the kind of insensitive, borderline foul piece of cinema that is nevertheless sprinkled around with good-to-great elements, no matter how wobbly the entirety is.I've seen how Audiard tried to excuse his work on this film as not being based on realism, and with that, I call bullsh*t. Realism or not adhering to it is a stylistic choice, not an excuse to trivialize actual experiences of several vulnerable communities depicted in the film. My conflicted feelings on the film are coming not from a place of abject outrage, but with considerable disappointment.
I do recognize that one of the main reasons why this resonated so much with the industry, aside from their virtue signaling to look progressive in the face of transphobia, is the film's stylistic audacity. The big swings it made. This is further highlighted especially since Hollywood, for the most part, has become so anti-expression, anti-risk, and anti-art that Emilia Pérez seemed like something that they would want to do. If this film's existence makes Hollywood consider taking more artistic risks as a result (I'm doubtful), then I'll take that win... I guess.
Any last words on Emilia Pérez, everyone?
NICK: I may have hated this movie, but I loved talking about it with you two!! Thanks for being such wonderful conversation partners.
JUAN CARLOS: And I'll wrap our conversation with the only way to end any discussion on Emilia Pérez:
I believe light will always triumph over darkness.
Reader Comments (7)
This conversation was as much of a roller coaster as the movie. Thank you all. While I didn't like the movie very much I'll be the first to admit that movies that movies that take big swings are way more fun to discuss (and read about!) than better movies that risk nothing.
I do have to agree with Lynn that despite her bad personality in real life, Gascon actually was quite good in this. Especially I thought in the restaurant scene where her character confronts Saldana's for the first time after transitioning.
Madison needs SAG, otherwise I don't see her dethroning Demi.
^^^ That comment was posted in the wrong thread (obviously).
I'm mexican and I don't feel offended as many have been said about the "disrespectul" treatment to social problems, I just don't see that the director wanted to analyze them and just used it as elements of the story so, I watched it not taking so seriously that part
I agree about the criticism of lack of interest from the production to include native latin or mexican talents, but even with the strange spanish that Saldaña and Gomez speak, I also can handle that
What really was disappointing for me is that, opposite what panelists says, I don't see it as an opera and more close to a SOAP opera: bland characters, involuntary comedy, random camera work, zero profundity to character development and even in the acting that are basically frown when are angry and a little sob in sadness
And as a musical I don't find any song specilally memorabe, surprises me how much some likes "El Mal" because in spanish is understandable half of the lyric, probably the only one i would save is "Para"
Even so Is not THAT terrible at all but if I have to choose a film directed by a foreigner, speaking of a social item in México and musical I prefer Carmen by Benjamin Millepied 100%
I do like the film though I am aware of its flaws and why people disliked it. It is a mess but I was entertained by it and I really liked the performances from the ladies in the film.
I enjoyed it until it descended into needless violence and the ladies Gascon esp were all good,Gomez seemed a bit out of her depth with the more dramatic stuff,I don't quite understand the Saldana sweep,it's a good performance but not that undeniable.
Gscons tweets whilst offensive to some should not have frozen her out of the season,she apologised and despite holding views maybe lots of people don't hold it's hardly the crime of the century.