Emilia Perez, Mexico and the Problem of Representation Without Context

Words: Lucía Barrenetxea

A French, white, male director makes a film about Manitas, a narco who transitions to redeem crimes in their past, as well as portraying the drug war that reigns over Mexico. I’m talking, of course, about Emilia Perez, the current talk of Oscar season, which has great cultural gaps and fails to be curious about its characters, making them flat, and somewhat oblivious to the real issues Mexico is facing. 

To dissolve the dread, the director chose to make a musical, romanticising the most painful issues of a society, which results in an insensitive and grotesque portrayal of both Mexico and trans people. To reduce this entirely to identity politics, however, would be wrong: we have seen other white, male filmmakers tell stories about marginalized members of society. For instance, Sean Baker in Tangerine (2015) offers an honest, curious and insightful perspective about trans people. Jacques Audriad's work, on the other hand, exposes a lack of genuine interest in both the subject and the culture represented, making it a film that perpetuates colonial culture in an apparently ‘postcolonial world’. 

“The director chose to make a musical, romanticising the most painful issues of a society, which results in an insensitive and grotesque portrayal of both Mexico and trans people.”

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To start with the appropriation of language, only one of the eighteen members of the cast is Mexican. This wouldn’t be an issue if actors had worked on their Mexican dialect, or the director had been able to learn it, but Audriard does not speak Spanish neither he has shown any interest to learn it as he says in an interview for W Magazine: “For me, there’s a music to language. Not knowing the language gives me a quality of  detachment. When I’ve directed in my own language, I get stuck on the details.”

That’s interesting enough, but the issues the film explores are too serious not to take the details seriously – it’s hardly surprising that this is missed, however, when the director calls the Spanish language “an emerging and marginalised language for the poor” in interviews.

In the first sequence of the film we see Zoe Saldaña, a frustrated lawyer working for a corrupt law firm that forces her to write false testimonies. She is in a courtroom where they are having a trial in the Roman style. But Mexican trials are written, with judges ruling on cases without a jury – again, showing us the director’s disconnection with the culture and lack of research. He claimed to have been in Mexico a few times to do scouting, but the ended up shooting in Paris, meaning that Emilia Perez, despite claiming to speak to life in Mexico, didn’t even contribute to the economy. Jacques Audriard defended himself by saying in an interview that Shakespeare didn’t need to go to Verona to write a story about that place. 

“Romanticising culture is one thing, however, but romanticising a war, as this film does, is to a point denigrating.”

Romanticising culture is one thing, however, but romanticising a war, as this film does, is to a point denigrating. Mexico has a latent issue with human trafficking and an ongoing drug war. With nearly 500,000 deaths since 2006 and more than 100,000 missing, Mexico is very much facing violence in many areas. When Emilia Perez becomes Emilia Perez, her mission is to search for the missing children and their mothers, she creates a non profit organisation called Lucecita (this translates to “little light”), which she funds with the money of the same criminals that had helped Manitas with the drug cartel. This is introduced by a song, performed by children, who mournfully sing: ‘Here I am to look at the nightmare face to face’. The editing effects alienate their faces into little circles that turn smaller and smaller, until disappearing with a fade out, making them completely irrelevant and hopeless. The director’s obliviousness to the issue of portraying the most vulnerable groups in this way is alarming, especially considering the context of his attitude to Mexico more generally. 

To give Emilia Perez’s success context, we can look to another past Oscars favourite. Gone with the Wind (1939) romanticises the pre war era and ignores the painful horrors of slavery, and yet it is considered one of the greatest American films of all time. The film presents the region's pre-Civil War era as a utopia of quiet living, and the Northern forces as interlopers, trying to disrupt that way of life. Gone with the Wind had thirteen Oscar nominations and won eight, including Best Picture. 

The Academy has also loved Emilia Perez. With thirteen Oscar nominations, the film is the most nominated non-English language film in history. But Adriana Paz, the only Mexican actor, has not been nominated. Karla Sofia Gascon is the first trans woman to be nominated for an Oscar. Yet, Audriard’s portrayal of Karla Sofia’s character is retrograde, flat and utterly unrealistic. 

If we look at the history of trans representation in the media, we can observe that trans characters are either vilified or simplified characters defined by their transness. There is a history of portraying transgender or cross-dressing characters as psychopaths: Psycho (1960), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, M. Butterfly (1993) by David Cronenberg and Soapdish (1991) directed by Michael Hoffman, to name a few. Or reverting their gender to fit societal expectations: Victor, Victoria (1982), and Yentl (1983), where Barbara Straisand’s character becomes a man in order to be a Rabbi.

But when Manitas, responsible for the death of plus 500 people, becomes Emilia Perez, they are able to redeem all of their crimes by being a woman, as change has made them sensitive, and embarks into a journey of finding justice for their own crimes. This is a simplistic and demagogic narrative, and manipulates the audience into believing that men have to carry the burden of being evil while women naturally have the instinct of being caregivers. 

And yet, the film is being fully celebrated. Partly, because those who have loved the film don’t have crucial context in mind: Mexico is a country that has been colonised and that is still very memorable in the Mexican consciousness. Film form should be free to make its own artistic choices, but Emilia Perez is exploitative, it poorly portrays Mexico’s reality and misses completely its socio-cultural context. The film has been made to be exported, and enjoyed everywhere but Mexico, ultimately perpetuating a colonial model in terms of how cinema is made, sold and presented.