In an age of superhero trilogies and television series designed for streaming, an original story told in the span of one movie should be any cinephile’s dream. “Emilia Pérez,” however, could’ve benefited from some extra time.
The 2024 musical-drama film, directed by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, follows the titular Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón) as she enlists the help of Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña), a lawyer from Mexico City, in order to transition to a woman and leave her life as a cartel leader behind — which includes her wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their children.
The film first premiered last May at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, has made about $15.4 million at the box office internationally since and received a near-record 13 nominations at this year’s Academy Awards.
The main issue with the structure of “Emilia Pérez” is that, plotwise, there is simply too much going on for the film’s 132-minute runtime. The film is split up into three distinct acts — Emilia’s life before her transition, her attempts years later to reunite with her family and the fallout of these attempts. However, within each act, there are many intriguing subplots that are not given the screen time they deserve.
For example, while Emilia is working on reuniting with her family, she and Rita are also establishing a nonprofit foundation dedicated to helping relatives of cartel victims find out what happened to their loved ones. Though this plotline is incredibly interesting, it is treated as a small subplot in the film and has no resolution due to the lack of time. If “Emilia Pérez” had instead been a series of films or a limited television series, it would’ve been possible to explore these enticing stories.
As for the technical side, the editing is jarring and takes the viewer out of the moment. In the conclusion of the first act, Emilia is in the hospital recovering from her gender reassignment surgery; in this two-minute scene alone, there are six fade-to-black transitions. Although the intention was to demonstrate Emilia’s slow recovery, the repetitive use of these transitions so close together confuses the viewer, taking them out of what should be an emotional and powerful scene.
The transitions into the musical numbers have a similar feeling, as they often jump into singing with little warning. The music often fails to add an extra element to the storytelling. In some rare cases, such as Rita’s “El Alegato” number in the beginning of the film, the songs reflect a character’s inner feelings, but for the most part they feel like dialogue with music underneath it, making them feel unnecessary.
Despite these struggles, there is one saving grace within “Emilia Pérez” — Zoe Saldaña. Her performance as Rita convincingly enables the viewer to see her internal struggle between doing what is asked of her and doing what she believes is right. She is the highlight of “Emilia Pérez,” and with her BAFTA, Critics’ Choice Awards, Golden Globe and SAG Awards wins, Saldaña’s chances of winning for her performance at the Academy Awards March 2 are incredibly high.
Outside of the film itself,“Emilia Pérez” is riddled with controversy, receiving criticism from transgender people, Mexican people and the internet as a whole. In November 2024, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation issued a statement about the film’s depiction of trans people, compiling a list of reviews from mostly trans critics who argue that it is a surface-level depiction of the trans experience with a plethora of anti-trans tropes.
Additionally, many Mexican people have spoken out against the film. One such person is Mexican screenwriter Héctor Guillén, who posted on X shortly after the Golden Globes to call out the film’s irresponsible treatment of Mexico’s drug war by making the film a musical. He also pointed out that only one cast member, Adriana Paz, was born in Mexico.
The controversy surrounding “Emilia Pérez” grew when a series of Gascón’s past X posts resurfaced in January in which she spoke against Islam, George Floyd, Chinese people and diversity at the Academy Awards. Although Gascón apologized for the tweets, she deleted her X account, calling the public’s response to her posts a “campaign of hate and misinformation,” only furthering the online discussion.
The Academy Awards should be an exciting moment for “Emilia Pérez,” as it is one of the most-nominated movies in the awards’ history, and Gascón is the first openly transgender actress to be nominated. But with disjointed storytelling, poor portrayals of marginalized communities and growing criticism, “Emilia Pérez” is a film that will likely forever be remembered by what it did wrong.
