Hollywood has done it again, feting a controversial feature film that a large number of viewers seem — let’s say, put off by. The movie in question is Netflix’s Emilia Pérez, a genre-bending musical crime thriller from French director Jacques Audiard in which a Mexican cartel leader fakes their death and undergoes a sex change operation. Audiences have panned it for so many reasons, for everything from glamorizing drug cartels to its portrayal of Mexican people (there’s “some Speedy Gonzales-level racism going on in this movie,” according to Mexican film critic Ricardo Gallegos Ramos).
Over at Them, a site covering LGBTQ+ stories and culture, executive editor Fran Tirado opined about Emilia Pérez: “I hate, hate, hate this film. I thought everyone in it was bad — bad singing, bad Spanish, bad acting, or beholden to a bad story, and therefore bad because of it. While we’re comparing, I would say Emilia Pérez is like if Ryan Murphy directed a really mid episode of Law & Order: SVU.“
Keep all of the above in mind when you see news outlets like Forbes doing that thing again that they love to do — asserting that the movie’s abysmal 30% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes must surely be indicative of “review-bombing.” Long story short, this is a problematic, controversial, and not exactly a highly regarded movie we’re talking about. Yet, somehow, it managed to rack up more than a dozen Oscar nominations this week; a grand total of 13, in fact.
Did The Academy even watch the same movie everyone else did? “It’s incredible, because somehow the film has united Mexico — everyone hates it,” Ramos continued, in comments he shared with Canada’s public broadcaster. Adds an angry user on X about the movie: “in méxico, over 20,500 people are killed yearly due to cartel related violence, and some [expletive] decides to make a musical about it.” A musical, by the way, that’s (sigh) up for Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, among others.
The disparity here between the audience reception and the critical acclaim Emilia Pérez has garnered certainly raises larger questions about the Oscars’ criteria for excellence. Many viewers have criticized the Academy for being out of touch, suggesting that the nominations reflect Hollywood’s tendency to congratulate itself for bold experiments over broader audience appeal. There’s also speculation that the movie’s marketing campaign, backed by Netflix’s deep pockets, maybe played a role in its awards season success.
“There’s a drug war, nearly 500,000 deaths [since 2006] and 100,000 missing in the country,” Mexican screenwriter Héctor Guillén told the BBC. “We are still immersed in the violence in some areas. You are taking one of the most difficult topics in the country, but it’s not only any film, it’s an opera. It’s a musical. So for us and many activists, it’s like you are playing with one of the biggest wars in the country since the revolution.”
