• Emilia Pérez is snagged 13 Oscar nominations
  • It stars Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldana
  • The Jacques Audriard-helmed flick is getting backlash
Emilia Pérez controversy.
L-R: Adriana Paz, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana and Karla Sofía Gascón.

The Emilia Pérez controversy might be dampening the film’s awards season buzz.

The movie musical, which boasts 13 Oscar nods, tells the story of a lawyer helping a Mexican drug cartel leader undergo gender reassignment surgery. They also attempt to right some of the wrongs he committed as Juan Del Monte.

Read more: Is Emilia Perez based on a true story?

However, it has been dogged by criticism. Mainly, the ire has come from LBGT groups and how it represents Mexico, particularly their missing person epidemic amid the drug wars.

Let’s break down all of the Emilia Pérez controversies.

What have LGBT groups said about Emilia Pérez contraversy?

Many groups advocating for LGBT rights have spoken out against the film. GLAAD dubbed how it hands transgender issues and the topic of transitioning as “retrograde”.

Many argue it doesn’t accurately portray the experience of coming out as trans accurately or progressively.

Despite this Emilia Pérez controversy, Karla Sofía Gascón has made history as the first openly transgender actress to snag an Academy Award nomination for her turn as the titular character. She was recognized in the Best Actress category.

Alongside Gascón, Zoe Saldana got a nod as a potential Best Supporting category for her turn as lawyer Rita Mora Castro.

Read more: Most controversial Academy Award moments ahead of 2025 Oscars

What about Emilia Pérez deals with Mexico’s missing person epidemic?

Mexican screenwriter Héctor Guillén made the point it was insensitive to make a musical about such a dark topic. For example, amid the nation’s drug war, 500,000 people have lost their lives, and roughly 100,000 people are officially missing.

To make the point, he made mock posters, tagging the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences, that read: “Mexico hates Emilia Pérez/ “Racist Euro Centrist Mockery”/ Almost 500K dead and France decides to do a musical.”

“I tried to copy the Hollywood way of promoting films [for awards consideration], you know, when they basically say, ‘amazing film'” Guillén told the BBC. “I wanted to do a counterpart of that, I wanted to get another vision out of what Emilia Pérez is to many of us Mexicans.”

He praised Audriard but questioned his decision to film most of the film in Paris.

Guillén also felt not enough has been done to shine a light on the movement of mothers in Mexico advocating to restore missing people to their loved ones.

Selena Gomez’s Spanish

Much ire for the film has been directed at Selena Gomez’s attempt at speaking Spanish. The Only Murders In The Building star plays Jessi Del Monte, the wife of Pérez.

Actor Eugenio Derbez called her accent “indefensible” while chatting on a popular Mexican film podcast, Hablando de Cine but later apologised when Gomez replied, “I’m sorry, I did the best I could with the time I was given.”

Gaby Meza, host of the podcast, explained what Derbez meant, saying, “It was intended to remark that if you don’t speak Spanish, you just see her good performance with subtitles.

She continued, “And she does give a good performance. What isn’t good is that there’s a disconnect between the words she says and her understanding of them. Her body, her voice, her tones say something, but the dialogue doesn’t match with what she’s saying. And that’s not Selena’s fault, because I think she wasn’t given the proper indications, the tools for her performance. The director is French and Selena is from the United States, but they’re communicating in Spanish.”

What has director Jacques Audiard said about the Emilia Pérez controversy?

The film’s director Audiard has clapped back at much of the Emilia Pérez controversy, such as never stepping foot in Mexico.

“I had the idea of making an opera of Emilia Pérez and then I got a bit scared, I felt like I needed to inject some realism into it,” he told the BBC. “So I went to Mexico, and we scouted there during the casting process as well, maybe two, three times and something wasn’t working.”

He opted to shoot it elsewhere because it didn’t match his vision.

“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.” 

In a recent press conference in Mexico, the filmmaker issued an apology to those offended by his movie, telling reporters, “if there are things that seem shocking in Emilia Perez, then I am really sorry… Cinema doesn’t provide answers, it only asks questions. But maybe the questions in Emilia Pérez are incorrect”.

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Clara Hill
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