The ‘Emilia Perez' Backlash Has Started

There inevitably was going to be an Oscar villain this year, and it’s turned out to, unexpectedly, be Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez” which is still guaranteed to earn a Best Picture nomination. The film is getting attacked by, predictably, the right and, unpredictably, the left, in equal measure.

Many on the left seem to have taken issue with the uninformed and exaggerated depiction of “trans realities” in “Emilia Pérez.” Nat Jones of Vulture writes ..

I’ll briefly note the haters are correct that the movie doesn’t have much to say about the lived experience of trans people. Emilia Pérez is not really about the trans experience, in part because Emilia Pérez is not “about” anything other than Emilia Pérez." Not only is Emilia Pérez accused of avoiding these actualities, but the film also misrepresents certain aspects of reality as well, which does more to set back trans representation in film than push it forward.

The Telegraph has an interesting piece, titled “Emilia Perez” is Enraging the Trans Mob,” tackling the culture war currently inflicting the film. The “protagonist goes from being a murderous sinner to a virtuous saint via the clean slate of gender reassignment,” writes Liam Kelly.

Some are wondering why, Audiard, “a cis straight guy [would] make a film about a cartel leader killing loads of Mexicans because of gender dysphoria then escaping retribution by transitioning.”

Harron Walker of The Cut writes …

I expect that a filmmaker so taken by the concept of transitioning, one who’s displayed a certain level of conscious sensitivity in his previous efforts to depict lives unlike his own, to at least display an informed understanding of what that concept actually looks like in practice."

Drew Burnett Gregory of Autostraddle notes the film's inclusion of various trans tropes, such as "deadnaming, trans woman killer, tragic trans woman, transition treated as a death, trans woman abandons her wife and children to transition, and trans woman described as half male/half female."

Others argue that “Emilia Pérez” is just not a very good film, and its Letterboxd rating (3.2/5) surely hints at a major divide among those who’ve seen the film, which is now available to stream on Netflix.

It should be noted that the lead of the film is played by a trans actress (Karla Sofia Gascon), who has obviously approved of the film, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for the “trans mob” (The Telegraph’s term) since the film was deviously written and directed by a straight white guy.

I assume many of our readers have now seen “Emilia Perez,” and would maybe like to chime in with their own thoughts on the film in the comments section below. Shoot away. The film has earned, mostly, positive reviews (85% RT) and won two prizes at Cannes — Gascon, Audiard and the film itself are prime Oscar contenders.