I’m not sure where to even start with Netflix’s controversial new movie Emilia Pérez, a musical about a trans cartel boss that’s somehow earned 13 Academy Award nominations — despite likewise earning a hilariously bad 23% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. How, for example, can a French filmmaker be so out-of-touch as to take Mexico’s narco wars, sparking waves of violence that have ravaged the country for decades now, and turn a story about it all into a campy musical? And for the cast of said musical to include not a single Mexican actor in a major role? Also, for the movie to be filled with gross stereotypes and generally badly spoken Spanish?
This is a bad movie we’re talking about here. As a column in The Los Angeles Times opines, “The narco musical ‘Emilia Pérez’ isn’t as bad as critics say — it’s worse.” Knowing all that, it’s understandable why a Mexican content creator and screenwriter would want to create Johanne Sacreblu, a tongue-in-cheek short film in response to the movie and to its French director. It, too, is a musical, one that turns the formula for Netflix’s dumpster fire of a movie inside out; specifically, Johanne Sacreblu tells an absurd French story, was made in Mexico, and only stars Mexican talent in front of the camera. A très magnifique turning of the tables, if you will.
With a tip of the hat to the film that inspired it, Johanne Sacreblu (from trans creator Camila Aurora) also cheekily bills itself as “Una película muy francesa” — translated from the Spanish, “a very French film.” Its logline: This is “the story of a trans woman who is an heiress to the biggest baguette producer in France and who falls in love with Agtugo Ratatouille, the trans heir to the biggest croissant company in France.”
In Emilia Pérez, for those who don’t know, a high-powered lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) helps a Mexican cartel leader (played by a trans actor from Spain, Karla Sofia Gascón) fake their death and undergo gender-affirming procedures. The parody, which you can watch below, has more than 1.1 million views on YouTube as of this writing, and the heart of its story is a long-standing feud between the Sacrebleu and Ratatouille families.
As one Spanish-speaking fan of the satirical film noted in a post on X, alluding to Emilia Pérez: “I have never been to France, I know very little or almost nothing about France, but I consider ‘Joanne Sacrebleu’ to be a faithful representation of French reality.”
There’s certainly a larger discussion to be had here about the kinds of movies like Emilia Pérez that Hollywood works itself into a frenzy over. It’s not exactly breaking news that this is a town that never gets tired of congratulating itself and of rewarding weirdness for the sake of it, damn whatever those pesky moviegoers who prop up the industry think about it. Also, for perspective: The 13 Oscar nominations Emilia Pérez received have put it in the company of classics like Forrest Gump and Mary Poppins, which also received 13.
The movie from director Jacques Audiard also won four out of its 10 Golden Globe nominations. And speaking of the Globes — in an interview with the BBC, Johanne Sacreblu co-creator Héctor Guillén said it didn’t escape his notice that “there were zero words in the four Golden Globe acceptance speeches to the victims.”
