French critics and audiences have fallen head over heels for Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez.” It’s not just that they couldn’t be more indifferent to Karla Sofía Gascón’s past tweets, but the film was also this huge box-office success in France.
This love affair with “Emilia Pérez” continued on tonight as the film swept the 50th Césars Awards on Friday evening, winning seven awards, including Best Director and Best Film. So, despite its award season derailment in the States, ‘Emilia’ still reigns supreme in France.
Past winners of the Césars for Best Film include “Amour,” “The Artist,” “Les Miserables” and last year’s winner “Anatomy of a Fall.” However, winning a César isn’t any kind of precursor for the Oscars since less than 1% of Oscar voters hail from Molière‘s home country.
In France, Audiard is one of the country’s most acclaimed filmmakers, having now won 12 Césars awards throughout his illustrious career, with films such as “A Prophet,” “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” “Rust and Bone” and “Dheepan.”
In the U.S. ‘Emilia’ has been thrust into a never ending storm of controversy involving Mexican representation, trans depictions and, to make matters worse, its star’s unhinged past tweets being unearthed for public consumption.
Speaking of Gascón, after laying low these last few weeks, the actress was in attendance at the ceremony, but skipped the press line on the red carpet. Gascón sat on the same row as Audiard and Saldana, but didn’t seat next to them.
A few others won some awards tonight that have a chance on Oscar Sunday, most notably “Flow” winning for Best Animated Film. In the Best Foreign Film category, which had a field including “Anora,” “The Apprentice,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” and “The Substance,” the winner was Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.