"Emilia Pérez" Review: Good Lord, Make Hollywood Stop

For once, the Internet isn't overreacting: this movie is bad as advertised.

January 27, 2025

On December 2, 1993, Colombian special forces tracked prolific drug lord Pablo Escobar, leader of the world’s most brutal, lucrative cartel, to a house in Medellín. After exchanging gunfire as part of a daring escape, Escobar was eventually shot to death on the roof, ending his reign of terror. In an iconic photograph, Colombian law enforcement smiles over Escobar’s corpse.

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Ordinarily, such a celebratory act would be, at best, unprofessional, but this was a special case. Escobar began the Medellín Cartel in 1976 and forged a cocaine empire that opened up the first drug trade routes across South America before conquering the US market. By the '80s, Escobar was the world's chief supplier of cocaine, and his net worth ballooned to the billions. An ambitious man, Escobar dabbled in politics, using his 1982 election to the Chamber of Representatives to curry public favor with ambitious projects. He was rich, loved, and powerful.

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If the story stopped at pedaling coke and building houses, his would be the story of a not-so-great guy facilitating a lethal epidemic while also housing little Colombian kids. Alas, the story does not stop there: not by a long shot.

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To kill one politician, Escobar ordered the bombing of Avianca Flight 203, murdering 107 people. Afterward, he orchestrated the DAS building bombing in Bogotá, killing 57 people and injuring nearly 2,300 others.

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But wait, there's more! Escobar frequently ordered the murder of any politician who refused his bribes, as well as judges, political opponents, law enforcement agents, and rival cartel members. In all, Escobar and his cartel were responsible for the torture and/or death of over 3,500 people.

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According to Emilia Pérez, the ghastly, bloated, confused mess of a movie that’s inexplicably accrued 13 Oscar nominations, if Escobar had been transgender, he’d have been a really great person.

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It’s the oldest trick in the book to decry something non-American, cisgender, and heterosexual in cinematic nature as being yet another instance of poor representation. Much of the criticism leveled at Emilia Pérez for its Mexican stereotypicality and bastardization of being transgender is rooted in the fact that if something can get construed as offensive, it will.

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However, make no mistake: Emilia Pérez is an atrocious “aim” at transgender representation (and a pitiful movie overall) because of its application of one of humanity’s most troubling principles, one that dooms the legitimacy of any LGBT activism: that being queer is a get-out-of-jail-free-card.

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Of course, in the film, where a drug queenpin effectively uses her transition to avoid eventual confinement, it is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Unfortunately, that idea ruins Emilia Pérez from the start.

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It isn’t necessarily widespread - as the coming out shenanigans of actor Kevin Spacey and television presenter Phillip Schofield have shown - but some believe that coming out absolves all sin. Fans of MTV’s The Challenge are familiar with competitor Paulie Calafiore, an obnoxious, conceited, lecherous, devious, philandering manchild who came out as bisexual in 2023.

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Despite his long-standing history of reprehensible behavior, like dating a woman, cheating on her with another woman, then lying to both so he could have his cake and eat it too, then going online and announcing to the world that his kinky sex life included Girlfriend 2 wearing Girlfriend 1’s lingerie during their unethical trysts, the millisecond he came out, all got absolved. Fans took to the Internet in droves to congratulate and forgive him, many claiming that his closeted sexuality was the root of all his behavior.

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It’s the same with any deviation from societal norms: people will always find a way to connect despicable behavior to root causes with absolutely zero bearing on said behavior, thus allowing people to slither out of accountability for their misdeeds. By attempting to portray its titular protagonist as a paragon of good, implying that her being transgender was the key to her altruism and compassion, it insults its audience. Transgender people can suck just like eeeeveryone else, and make no mistake about it, Emilia Pérez sucks.

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Oddly, it’s difficult to conjure personal outrage at this attempt at ethical whitewashing because the movie doesn’t try that hard. Yes, Emilia speaks softly and carries a big nonprofit stick when she decides to right her wrongs and help families of cartel victims (i.e., her victims) find peace by digging up and then reburying their dead, but it always feels empty. Director Jacques Audiard pedals the vague idea that Emilia’s transition has buried the monster and unearthed the angel, but he doesn’t commit to it. It feels more like he wants the mere presence of a transgender character to elicit a reaction, which is indicative of the movie’s primary issue.

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Movie people love Oscars. They campaign for Oscars, beg for Oscars, and allegedly even bribe for Oscars. Something about that golden statuette drives the Hollywood hills wild, and they'll do anything to secure one for one of their 37 mantelpieces. If that means throwing the kitchen sink of cinematic catnip at the most ravenous pack of felines on the planet, so be it.

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Emilia Pérez spends most of its torturous 132-minute runtime simply checking off the boxes needed to appeal to the self-aggrandizing, out-of-touch goons that file into the Dolby Theatre on Oscar night. Musical? Check. Topical protagonist? Check. Loose imagining of another culture? Check.

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But is it a musical? Sure, there are purposeless songs that distract from the narrative, which are key components of movie musicals. Still, the songs are all monotonous and unimaginative. If you thought the viral “El Vaginoplastia” was atrocious, try any other song from the movie, all totally out of place, lacking any melody, and whose lyrics are just people singing things that would be better communicated by simply speaking. Some may claim it's an aim at comedy that the masses have misinterpreted, but Audiard has the credibility of OJ Simpson slipping on a glove in that respect. There’s virtually no effort, and it’s not subtle.

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Is the protagonist topical? Technically, yes. Hollywood covered environmentalists nearly 20 years ago, then they did gay people for a while, and now they’re pretending to care about transgender people. Of course, since they only care about appearing to care, it’s fitting that a character like Emilia Pérez, so thinly imagined she’s essentially a human tree, appeals so much to them. Emilia has no discernible personality, her ambitions (while stated and shown) never get explained, her hypocrisy and abusive behavior go unchallenged, and her gender identity is simply a plot device. Thus, in the technical sense, her being transgender is very current, and therefore, she’s topical. But is she presented as an actual human being? No.

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Does it loosely imagine another culture? In that controversial scene where Emilia’s young daughter, living with Pérez under the assumption she’s a distant cousin, says that Pérez smells like her father because she reeks of Mezcal and guacamole, stereotypes are at play.

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However, if you’ve lived anywhere with Mexicans, you can’t deny the abundance of Mezcal and guacamole. Besides, she lists a dozen other ways that Emilia’s scent reminds her of the death artist formerly known as Papa Kingpin; the issue is that the Mezcal and guac combo represents how little concern Audiard shows for the Mexican people. You know, since there are no Mexican actors except for Adriana Paz and the Spanish language gets repeatedly butchered.

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Can we blame them? Casting director Carla Hool blamed the lack of Mexican representation on the lack of Mexican talent. People have rebuked her remarks, but this reviewer takes zero issue; it’s hard to find talent in a country of 131 million people.

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Alas, if you’re reading this, you came for a review, not a critique of our unjust, exploitative society, so...

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Is there good? A tad. For approximately 20 minutes, Emilia Pérez is a decent drama. It begins when Emilia, having transitioned into her proper physical form and a brand new life, reunites with her unknowing ex-wife, Jessi, and children. Eventually, the scene between Emilia and her daughter occurs, and then the movie resumes being garbage.

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Occasionally, there’s some intriguing use of color, namely during said scene between Emilia and her daughter. Despite the online ravaging of her performance, Selena Gomez mostly shines as Jessi. The Spanish is noticeably strained even to a non-speaker, but she captures her characters' emotions beautifully more often than not. Zoë Saldaña isn’t mesmerizing, but considering the atrocious screenplay, she's solid.

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Now that all is fair, let it be said plainly: Emilia Pérez is bad. It’s a shameless exposition of exploitative pseudo-representation. It doesn’t try to be a musical but wants to get classified as one. It doesn’t elaborate on its social themes but wants credit for floating them. It doesn’t care about the culture it “represents” but demands we award it for knowing guacamole exists. It’s lifeless, technically derivative, thematically scattershot, and narratively bizarre. It’s so inept that it essentially becomes Mrs. Doubtfire mixed with Les Misérables mixed with Traffic. It’s an outright insult to everything it (sort of) claims to be.

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If nothing else, we can say this: the next time the government wants to track down a drug lord and haul him off to prison but ultimately shoot him to death instead, have them watch Emilia Pérez first. With a good surgeon, anyone can get redeemed: their movie, on the other hand…