Imagine a musical about Osama Bin Laden and 9/11. Suicide bombers exploding to the beat and civilians crying in the chorus. However, it was filmed in Singapore with Singaporean directors, writers, and cast who skimmed the Al-Qaeda Wikipedia page and then got to work. The film then claims that the reason for inaccuracies is that 9/11 was not really central to the story or dramatic enough so they had to make it fit their artistic vision. This is the design philosophy and quality that created the Oscar-winning musical Emilia Perez. This is also the philosophy that earned it boycotts from Mexican audiences.
Much of this criticism can arguably be placed on director Jacques Audiard. Many of the film’s issues arise from its incoherence seems linked to his ignorance and design choices. According to a BBC article on why audiences are upset, Mexico did not quite fit Audiard’s vision of what Mexico should be:
“So I went to Mexico, and we scouted there during the casting process as well, maybe two, three times and something wasn’t working. And I realised that the images I had in my mind of what [the film] would look like just didn’t match the reality of the streets of Mexico. It was just too pedestrian, too real. I had a much more stylised vision in my mind. So that’s when we brought it to Paris and reinjected the DNA of an opera within it.”
Furthermore, according to Carson Blackwelder and Angeline Jane Bernabe who wrote the “Oscars 2025: The ‘Emilia Pérez’ controversy explained” article for ABC News Audiard claims:
“He said the inclusion of cartels in the film was for “thematic” purposes, not to be the main focus of the film, adding, ‘It’s not something that I’m particularly focused on in the film. There’s one scene that deals with it. The real thing that I’m interested in, that I was interested in doing, is that I wanted to make an opera. That demands a strong stylization.’ ”
It remains a mystery what he considers his “vision of Mexico” but whatever it is he has no right to set a film in a country he has little understanding of or a country he did not think fit his vision or was fit for his so called opera. What Audiard is really saying is that Mexico is too much like normal life and not close enough to his preconceived notions, and his claim that there is only one scene dealing with the cartels and that it was “thematic” (because national level crime organizations are just so good for vibes?) make no sense. The main character is formerly the head of the fictional largest cartel and then spends the rest of the film tackling the issue of the disappeared and finally dying because of the cartels.
The whole movie is centered around the nature of cartels and the killings and disappearances and according to BBC, Mexican screenwriter Héctor Guillén harshly criticized Audiard’s treatment of such a sensitive topic:
“ ‘There’s a drug war, nearly 500,000 deaths [since 2006] and 100,000 missing in the country,’ he says, citing recent Mexican government figures.”We are still immersed in the violence in some areas. You are taking one of the most difficult topics in the country, but it’s not only any film, it’s an opera. It’s a musical. So for us and many activists, it’s like you are playing with one of the biggest wars in the country[…]’ ”
This is understandably a raw wound for Mexican audiences especially considering that the tragedies are ongoing in the country right now and the film truly does little to address them. They are used as a means to an end for the main character and nothing more. There is no respect shown for victims and their families and such personal situations cannot be pushed aside for “thematic purposes” as Audiard would like. The fact that it is a musical is even more insulting because the music does reflect the graveness of the matter and blows over the victims without even bothering to have a solemn tone.
Then, after all his statements about theme and opera, according to BBC Audiard remarks on his overarching ideas for the film:
“ ‘There are two sensitive issues really in this film, transgender identity and the disappeared in Mexico,” he says. “And it’s something that I can’t quite rationally explain, but there was a link between the two where I imagined that this story of whether this gangster, who’s responsible for this evil, redeems themselves and by extension the whole of Mexico, through this transition, through changing themselves.’ ”
First, Audiard states that the disappeared in Mexico are a sensitive issue and that the story is based around a gangster and their redemption. It was not long ago that he called it thematic elements which were not central to the story. Second, the hubris to claim that all of Mexico needs to be changed and redeemed for crimes committed against them is jaw dropping. I can only imagine the mothers and fathers of the disappeared hearing that their country needs to be redeemed as they think of their children who were caught in the crossfires of violence. Finally, it makes sense why this film which felt like it was trying to be trans positive felt so anti-trans to me. It is because Audiard used transgenderism as an escape from guilt rather than making a movie which actually offers fairer representation and engages in real tension between the ideas around transgenderism. His film was not bold; it was generalizing and demeaning to all involved.
Finally, it is actually no surprise that he looks down upon Mexico in such a way because according to ABC, in the past he is documented as having demeaned the Spanish language and the people who speak it:
“As an example critics point to, in a video published in August, Audiard told French culture publication Konbini that Spanish ‘is a language of developing countries, it’s a language of countries of few means, of poor people, of migrants.’ ”
This feels genuinely racist and there seems to be no other reasonable interpretation of his words. It is such a large generalization of peoples over such an unfounded connection that gives off such an air of superiority over millions of people. It makes sense why he refused to film in Mexico if these are his preconceived notions. He wanted a wasteland filmed with crime around every corner–and Mexico admittedly does struggle with crime–but he found a nation full of people going about their daily lives as they would elsewhere. He truly lacked the understanding of the people and their language to make a film about them and now he is getting accolades for it.
The film was generally atrocious and about halfway in it became necessary–for the sake of mental health–to speed up to 1.5x speed since, regrettably, Netflix did not offer any faster options. The story felt driven by a forced plot instead of characters. The film almost insists upon its own narrative rather than flowing naturally with subtlety. Not a single character inspired personal connections. For example, Emilia was meant to inspire sympathy and never did, but whether it was because the film pushed so obviously, bad character writing, or simplistic dialogue I cannot tell. The musical numbers were mediocre and the award winning song “El Mal” was arguably the worst. The choreography felt as though it was detached from the song and was only there to push a different message rather than highlight the music.
