Mexico – The film “Emilia Pérez” finally succeeded in the big screen in Mexico City – the main framework of the musical that weighs the genre on narco -violence and transgender culture which has just won 13 Oscar nominations, including the best film.
The reception was at best freezing.
During its opening last weekend, the Spanish language melodrama of Jacques Audiard finished eighth in the receipts at the box characteristic of Latvia.
And the almost vévant projection rooms in recent days suggest that viewers’ numbers are decreasing in the middle of a mainly hostile -if not indignant -audience -.
Actor Adriana Paz speaks during a press conference to promote the film “Emilia Pérez” in Mexico City on January 15, 2025.
(Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press)
“A waste of time,” said Areli Vázquez, 24, a psychology student leaving a multiplex during a recent evening. “In the end, you have without clear message on Los NarcoS, on the trans problem, on the missing…. Just a superficial look at all these questions. »»
Adding Carmela Espinoza, 67, retired primary school teacher: “It was offensive and made fun of the Mexicans.”
Finding people who did not hate the film was not easy, but there were, like Omar Robles, 42, whose curiosity was piqued by the Firetorm of the social media produced towards the film.
“I didn’t really like the film, but I don’t think it’s as bad as they say,” said Robles, a Uber driver. “It shows the reality of Mexico. And we, the Mexicans, don’t like it when people talk badly about us. But the film does not lie. All that shows, and sometimes it’s even worse. I would recommend it.
The film tells the story of a brutal drug ankle, Manitas del Monte, which, for reasons that remain obscure, decides to simulate his own death and undergo a sex change procedure. He emerges like Emilia Pérez, a philanthropist who puts her unlawful fortune in charity to help people find dear beings who “have disappeared” in the violence of the cartel which she once fomented.
Audiard, the French director of the film, said that he was aiming for a discordant cinematographic experience, something over it.
“You are in a film Narco and, then, Bam, you are in a Telenovela,” he told Variety, comparing the film and his idiosyncratic sequences of singing and dance to an opera. “I wanted this floating thing,” added Audiard, who received an nodal nomination to direct.
The film recreate some of the most bound scenes in Mexico: desperate women distributing images of expensive loved ones, people with the criterion in search of remains, and armed men leading hooded captives, probably never to see again.
However, some of the most sharp declines come from Mexican “collectives”, basic volunteers – mainly women – who are looking for more than 100,000 missing, often risking their lives. In the film, the cartel gangsters seem to provide advice to researchers on where to find clandestine graves.
Director Jacques Audiard has gestures at a press conference to promote his film “Emilia Perez” in Mexico City on January 15, 2025.
(Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press)
“THE narcos Never give us information about how to find our loved ones, “said Virginia Garay Cazares, 53, whose son, a hot dog seller, was 19 years old when he disappeared in 2018.” And nobody Do not give us money to help you either. We pay for everything ourselves.
“It’s good with us if the director of this film wants to become famous,” said Garay, who runs a collective. “But why didn’t he come to talk to us?” Then he could have presented reality as it is. Not as if he imagines it.
In accordance with the members of the Academy of Arts and Cinema Sciences who choose nominees for Oscars, criticism in the United States and Europe have generally celebrated “Emilia Pérez”.
“A lawyer, an ankle or his wife enters a musical, and” Emilia Pérez “was born”, wrote the critic Robert Abele in Times, calling the film “Colorful and colorful epic on transformation, redemption and The retreat of the voice of in a hard world.
Most of these positive criticisms appeared before the torrent of Mexico objections gathered a critical mass.
In the opinion of many in Mexico, “Emilia Pérez” trafficking in distortion and stereotype. Critics say that the metamorphosis of the gang leader defies reality, and that the kind and benevolent personality of Emilia Pérez laughs at the victims who suffered during her old malicious reign.
The film “still maintains an incredible, colorful, neon, neon, with a mexico more bottom than the substance,” recently wrote the chronicler Alejandro Alemán in the newspaper El Universal.
Mexican filmmaker Camila Aurora has published a short parody of “Emilia Pérez” which makes fun of all French things, baguettes and berets with wine and thin mustaches. The parody, “Johanne Sacreblu”, has more than 2 million views on Youtube on January 31.
However, some maintain here that indignation about the film can reflect a collective feeling of denial on the quantity of violence that has torn the fabric of Mexican society.
“Ask yourself: why does a film make a bigger scandal than the reality he is trying to present?” The columnist Pascal Beltrán Del Río wrote in the newspaper Excélsior in Mexico.
Critics also note that none of the three main actors is Mexican. A Spaniard, Karla Sofía Gascón, commands the title role, while actresses born in the United States Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña also play.
Saldaña was nominated for an Oscar as a supporter, while Gascón obtained a sign of the head as a main actress – becoming the first openly transgender actor to be so honored.
This did not prevent contempt for the LGBTQ + community in Mexico and elsewhere. Glaad, the defenders’ defense group, said that “Emilia Pérez” presented “a deeply retrograde representation of a trans woman”.
Actress Adriana Paz interacts with fans during a red carpet event to promote the film “Emilia Pérez” in Mexico City on January 15, 2025.
(Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press)
The deepening of the controversy was the sudden resurfacing of several former publications of social media from Gascón expressing incendiary opinions on Muslims, George Floyd and diversity. In a statement this week via Netflix, which distributes the film, the actor said that she was “deeply sorry for those I caused to pain”. She then disabled her X account.
Even if the film was shot in France, not in Mexico, it has authentic touches: the film opens with plaintive and recorded calls from a young girl soliciting old household appliances and other scraps. The needle advocacy loops daily across the capital while recyclers make their turn in the microphones wrapped with garbage.
But the longtime inhabitants of Mexico City are incongruities: the prevalence of palm trees, poorly named or non -existent institutions, a judicial scene with a jury even if the criminal jury trials do not exist here.
“Pure opportunism,” concluded Jorge Volpi, a Mexican essayist writing in the newspaper El País of Spain. “The originality that emerges from the vain and superficial impulse.”
Mexico cascade criticism can have an effect. Just before the release here of “Emilia Pérez”, the director offered apology.
“If there are things that, for Mexicans, seem scandalous in” Emilia “, then I’m sorry,” Audiard at CNN Español told. “Cinema does not provide answers, it only asks questions. But maybe the questions in “Emilia Pérez” are incorrect. »»
However, walking towards the Oscars takes place.
Sánchez Vidal is a special correspondent.
