At the Golden Globes Sunday, Emilia Pérez walked away with one of the biggest prizes of the night: Best Picture, Musical or Comedy. But as Karla Sofía Gascón took the stage for a speech about self-actualization, the internet flamed the Netflix movie for what many called an inauthentic portrayal of Mexican culture and trans experience.
“When Mexicans tell you that a movie… is portraying a Mexico full of stereotypes, ignorance, lack of respect and is profiting from one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world,” wrote Mexican actor Mauricio Morales in an X statement. “Maybe… just maybe, believe Mexicans.”
Another X user called the film’s Golden Globe wins a “joke,” adding that “it’s a racist, xenophobic mess with awful Mexican representation made by a French director who didn’t even bother to research our culture.”
Online critics have begun to point out that Jacques Audiard, a French director known for genre-jumping films like A Prophet and Rust and Bone, does not speak Spanish, did not film the musical in Mexico, nor did he include Mexican-born actresses for any of its three main roles. Others have criticized the film’s portrayal of transness as an outdated, regression of trans people on screen. However, some have defended Emilia Pérez, including its cast, and Mexican directors Issa Lopez and Guillermo Del Toro, who called it “beautiful.” A Netflix rep declined to comment.
Despite the online backlash, the film received high praise when it first screened at Cannes, and it earned four total Golden Globes on Sunday. The wild, drama-comedy-musical film follows Rita (Zoe Saldaña), a Mexico City lawyer, who helps a cartel leader (Karla Sofía Gascón) in search of a doctor willing to perform gender-affirming surgery in secret. After some musical numbers, including the now viral song “La Vaginoplastia,” the former drug lord becomes Emilia Pérez. The film warps into Pérez’s journey to help the lives of those affected by cartel leaders, like her previous self, as she reunites with her kids and her former wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) under the guise of “Aunt Emilia.”
Here are some of the Emília Pérez critiques, and what the film’s cast and director have said about them:
None of the protagonists are Mexico-born actresses
One of the most significant criticisms of the film is the exclusion of Mexico-born actresses in the film’s three lead roles, given that the film takes place in Mexico, and is about the very serious issues of drug trafficking that affects the country.
“I saw lots of actresses in Mexico, I met trans actresses, but it simply wasn’t working,” Audiard said at a Q&A, per The Hollywood Reporter. “And then I don’t remember exactly how it came about, but in a very short period of time, I met Karla Sofía Gascón… And then I met Zoe [Saldaña] on Zoom, and something appeared very clearly to me.”
While the actresses’ real-life identities are slightly incorporated in the film, many online found issues with how Audiard ultimately opted for actresses not from Mexico in its main roles. After Sunday’s Globes, a clip of casting director Carla Hool went viral saying they did a “big search” for actors in Latin America and Mexico.
“We wanted to keep it really authentic, but at the end of the day, the best actors who embodied the characters are the ones right here,” Hool said. “We had to adjust authenticity… with the accents, with them not being native Mexican.”
Of its six main cast members, only Adriana Paz, who plays Emilia Pérez’s love interest, is Mexican. Édgar Ramírez, Gomez’s character’s love interest, is Venezuelan.
Karla Sofía Gascón
Gascón, who’s from Spain, plays the titular role of a transgender, Mexican cartel leader, named Manitas. Audiard told The New York Times that he was immediately drawn to the actress to play Pérez: “The minute I saw her, that was it.” However, in the film, the actress’ clear Spaniard accent often sneaks through.
When speaking to Rolling Stone for a profile in October, the actress said it was a “difficult job” to master the Mexican accent, adding that it was even more challenging given that the film was made in France. “Every Mexican I’ve met, except the one sitting in front of me, has said that my accent was impressive,” Gascón said. “If I were to speak in my typical accent to you, you’d die.”
Zoe Saldaña
Saldaña — who is of Dominican-Puerto Rican descent — won her first-ever Golden Globe Sunday for her portrayal of lawyer Rita in the Netflix film. A standout in the film, Saldaña’s non-native Mexican heritage is briefly explained when Rita shares that her family migrated to the country from the Dominican Republic when she was young.
“Rita, on paper, was supposed to be of Mexican origin,” Saldaña recently told W Magazine. “But I just felt that I could play her because I understood that desperation to be something, to be seen, to be heard, and to be appreciated for your passion.”
Selena Gomez
Of the three principal actresses in Emilia Pérez, Gomez is the only one to be of Mexican descent. However, Gomez has been criticized for her questionable, pocha accent in the film.
Gomez plays Jessi, the wife of Gascón’s character pre-transition, Manitas. Her less-than-ideal accent is explained in the film — albeit briefly — by the fact that she was born in the U.S. and moved to Mexico to live with her husband as a teen. Gomez sneaks in a few lines in English to back up that storyline.
“I definitely wish I had more time [to prep],” Gomez told Remezcla about learning Spanish for the role. “It was wonderful. The experience was in a way reconnecting. I’m grateful for it. If anything, I hope this isn’t [the] last thing I do in Spanish.”
Eugenio Derbez calls Gomez’s acting ‘indefensible’
Gomez’s poor Spanish-speaking skills have been heavily criticized since the movie was released.
Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez was one of the first celebrities to heavily criticize Gomez’s performance in the film, calling her acting “indefensible.” He and podcast host Gaby Meza agreed that the singer’s lack of knowledge of the Spanish language contributed to her supposed poor performance in the film.
“Selena is indefensible,” Derbez told podcast host Gaby Meza last month. “I was there [watching the film] with people, and every time a scene came [featuring Gomez], we looked at each other and said, ‘Wow, what is this?’”
Gomez was quick to fire back and wrote in a comment, “I’m sorry I did the best I could with the time I was given. Doesn’t take away from how much work and heart I put into this movie.” Derbez then apologized for his initial comment, calling them “careless.”
Some Mexican users, however, have even made memes and TikToks out of one of her lines in the film, when she talks to her boyfriend on the phone, and says, “Hasta me duele la pinche vulva nada más de acordarme de ti,” in her broken Spanish. (In English, the line translates to: “Even my fucking vulva hurts when I think of you.”) Viewers critiqued both her pronunciation, and the written dialogue in Gomez’s lines.
Mexican story, filmed in France
Despite the film’s storyline taking place in Mexico, Emilia Perez is a French production and was filmed entirely in France. The film was even selected as the country’s Best International Feature Film at the 97th Oscars.
Emilia Pérez reimagined Mexico City, London, Tel Aviv, and Switzerland in a studio located in the Paris suburb Bry-sur-Marne, according to THR. Audiard previously said he visited Mexico “three or four times,” but felt that filming in the country where his movie is based would be limiting.
”We did location scouting. We did some casting. And I think it was at the end of the third visit that I realized that if I worked in these real locations, I would stay stuck to the ground,” Audiard said, per THR. “You see, I had all these images in my head, and these images weren’t going to fit on the streets of Mexico.”
In his criticism of Gomez’s acting, Derbez pointed out Audiard’s French background (and lack of English and Spanish comprehension) as a reason for the poor acting in the film. “It’s like me making a Russian film without knowing the culture or the language, and speaking in France,” he said last month. “Like wow, what is this.”
While speaking to Rolling Stone in October, Gascón mentioned that the Mexican people onset “already had the French accent.” She said Audiard even incorporated a wardrobe worker in the film as one of the mariachi singers featured in the film. “I think this movie is more Mexican than what many Mexicans make,” Gascón said.
Gascón’s statement aligned with Mexican filmmaker Issa Lopez’s take on the film. She told CNN En Español on the Golden Globes red carpet that the film “blew her mind,” saying Audiard did “better than any Mexican facing this issue at this time.” Mexican Shape of Water director Guillermo Del Toro also previously praised the film, calling the musical “beautiful.”
“A step backward for trans representation”
Following the film’s May premiere at Cannes, Audiard explained that a brief mention of a transgender drug dealer in Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute intrigued him and he began working on a screenplay, in hopes of making it an opera.
Despite his intentions, online critics, and even GLAAD, have slammed the film for its decision to use the protagonist’s transgender identity as a redemption arc and tool to escape her cruel, drug cartel past.
To recap: The musical’s protagonist fakes her own death to live honestly as a woman. She goes from being responsible for drug-related slayings to assisting those who are victims of cartel violence, and despite Audiard’s efforts to humanize her, he “fails to realize that his titular heroine is, if anything, the villain of his film,” read a review by The Cut.
Many online users took particular issue with song “La Vaginoplastia,” which quickly went viral for its oversimplification of gender-affirming surgeries to an all-in-one, checklist: mammoplasty, vaginoplasty, rhinoplasty, laryngoplasty, and chondrolaryngoplasty, and an Adams’ apple reduction surgery. In the film, the doctor sings “penis to vagina” and “man to woman” during a laughable explanation of the medical procedure.
Before we know it, Manitas has undergone a radical transformation and reenters the world as Emilia Pérez. Pink News wrote the film, “loses all nuance when it comes to trans identity,” and online critics have begun to agree.
In a lengthy op-ed, GLAAD slammed the film as a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman,” calling the film a “step backward for trans representation.”
In a Rolling Stone profile with Gascón, she admitted to having misgivings about the first script, which included more comedy elements. She pushed for the film to include more complexity around the trans experience.
“If Manitas transitioned just to flee justice,” she said, “then the entire thing would’ve been a joke. It would’ve been a pure comedy for people to laugh in theaters without anything transcendental. It would’ve been a film that the LGBTQ community would’ve said ‘What is this?’”
