REVIEW: ‘Emilia Pérez’ Hates México

I wouldn’t have been surprised if a masked luchador with churros in his hands jumped out of a streetlight during the opening minutes of Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez. Throughout the sequence, the French director harshly showcases stereotypical elements associated with México: mariachis, street vendors, and passion for football; there’s even the amusing sound of a fierroviejero truck, which any inhabitant will recognize.

This shallow and unauthentic representation of México is further highlighted by Zoe Saldaña’s failed attempt at a Mexican accent, which later on is lazily justified by Audiard through an “I was born in the Dominican Republic” throwaway line. From the get-go, it’s clear that Audiard isn’t interested in getting to know México and its people but in portraying what he thinks being Mexican is through his superficial tourist lens.

During the movie’s presentation at the 2024 Morelia International Film Festival, Audiard himself admitted he didn’t research much about México before starting production (“what I had to understand I already knew a little bit”). And it shows.

There are many things that any Mexican will recognize as fake throughout the movie: the Google translate level quality of many lines such as “ejecutar la investigación” (“execute the investigation”), “Deshacer las pruebas realmente” (“destroy the proof really”) or “siento un sentimiento,” (“feel a feeling”) the phony use of the “No mames” and other typical Mexican phrases by Saldaña, or the numerous sketchy accents by its non-Mexican cast (Audiard changed the script to give his characters non-Mexican nationalities and therefore justify his lazy casting). And I’m only scratching the surface. But you could almost say these are unoffensive details compared with the director’s alarming exploration of narco culture and violence in the country.

Most Mexicans who have seen Emilia Pérez have emphatically criticized its thoughtless handling of sensitive subjects. Even Rodrigo Prieto, one of the best cinematographers in the industry, recently blasted the film for its inauthentic portrayal of the country and the lack of Mexican professionals in its production. To better understand why we in México feel offended by this movie, maybe you need some context of our sociopolitical situation (something Audiard, of course, didn’t research).

In 2024 alone, México has recorded 10,000 missing persons. The total number of missing persons in the last six years was 51,791. Our morgues have more than 72,100 unidentified bodies of murdered individuals between 2006 and 2023. In only the first half of 2024, a total of 523 femicides were recorded in México. The government counted a total number of 5,698 clandestine graves between 2007 and 2023. There are numerous organizations comprised of madres buscadoras, mothers, and relatives who search for the remains of their missing loved ones across the country, hoping to find a bone, ashes, or anything.

Thousands have been displaced from their homes due to narcos’ rampant violence. Just a month ago, Marcelo Pérez, an activist priest who fought for Indigenous and farm laborers’ rights in Chiapas, was murdered by drug cartels. Earlier in the month still, Alejandro Arcos Catalán, mayor of Chilpancingo, was beheaded less than a week after taking office. Residents of the state of Culiacán have been under siege for months due to the daily violence and shootings between cartels and the army that are taking place there. Narcos have significant power in our society; these occurrences are just a few examples of its consequences. This is our reality.

Of course, Audiard doesn’t really care about the violence in México or the victims. Like many other foreign directors, he’s only interested in using it for shock and dramatic purposes. This is yet another irresponsible narconovela—this one shot by a French crew in France to depict their racist and narrow first-world vision of México.

In fact, Audiard is so out of touch with reality that he immediately tries to humanize Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón), a cartel leader who wants to live the rest of his days as a woman. During the character’s introduction, Audiard brushes over the fact that Manitas has been responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands of crimes, and tries to make you feel pity for their sad and trapped soul. Audiard tries to make us empathize with a trans character so that we look away from his racism, but having queer representation doesn’t exclude the presence of racism in it.

After a musical number between Rita and an Israeli doctor, Audiard attempts a comedic cut to a shot with both characters using bags on their heads while on the back of a cartel car. The fact that Audiard tries to make you laugh by evoking the image of a cartel kidnapping is repulsive. But it gets worse.

While Manitas tries to convince the doctor to perform the gender-affirming surgery, we see shots of happy narcos having a party, kids playing soccer, and Manitas looking at the stars with their family. The editing and cinematography choices try to create warmth around this sequence, as if saying, “Look at them; they’re humans with feelings, too. Look at Manitas. He just wants to be happy.” Let’s just forget that he’s a mass murderer.

After the surgery, Emilia Pérez (formerly Manitas) has a telenovela-level change of heart and magically realizes she wants to help the relatives of missing people around México (you can read about the film’s misguided transgender representation here from a Mexican American trans film critic). There’s no strong build-up to this decision.

Emilia feels empathy toward the victims after barely meeting the relative of a missing person. “When she kissed my hands, and I felt her tears, I loved myself for the first time,” she says. Then, she is portrayed as being ignorant of the number of enforced disappearances in the country: “How many disappeared people are there in the country?” she asks in a line that tries to wash away the evil crimes she committed in her past.

The film paints her as ignorant instead of a monster. Our main character then decides to create an NGO to identify the bodies of cartel victims, and she does so with the help of “regretful sicarios” willing to help people looking for their disappeared relatives. Shortly after, we’re subjected to a musical number where these relatives sing about their suffering along with former sicarios who sing about wanting to change to “make the disappeared appear.” It’s insulting.

Audiard doesn’t delve into the true horrors caused by sicarios. He doesn’t understand the profound suffering narco culture has caused in the country. He’s not interested in portraying the pain of the madres buscadoras. Instead, he only shows the “good side” of these former sicarios and narcos who want to do good for society. Not only is Audiard humanizing these evil deeds, but he’s making a spectacle out of the pain they caused, too.

The insidiousness of Emilia Pérez continues as, during the gala scene, Zoe Saldaña’s Rita performs a musical number criticizing and condemning the corruption of the attendants; members of the Mexican society in positions of power who’ve been involved in aiding the cartel. Although this is a half-caked attempt, at least Audiard tackles the hypocrisy and putrefaction of the Mexican system and its relationship with the cartels.

The problem is that this critique falls into the same irresponsible and quite ignorant idea he repeats over and over again in Emilia Pérez: all the violence, death, and cruelty in the country is México’s own fault. Furthermore, the whole scene is baffling given the fact that throughout the entire movie, Rita is literally presenting Emilia, a despicable murderer, as an angel focused on stopping the suffering of Mexican victims. Rita was instrumental in washing Emilia’s numerous crimes, but now she’s dancing on tables, criticizing people for being in cahoots with the same people she’s in cahoots with.

Audiard’s ignorance is also carried out with embarrassing unoriginality in all the technical departments. Besides the plastic production and costume design that utterly fails to convey life in México, mustard is, once again, ever present in the color scheme during the day scenes, while dark blue abounds at night. Paul Guilhame’s ugly cinematography and Juliette Welfling’s chaotic editing try in vain to create energy during musical numbers that lack rhythm and lyrical depth.

The ending of Emilia Pérez is exactly what you could expect from an ignorant European talking about México: a shooting and car chase sequence between narcos (featuring Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramírez). That’s the extent of this auteur’s so-called creativity. At least, we have Karla Sofía Gascón and Selena Gomez’s strong performances to make these last few scenes watchable, even if their accents will make any Mexican viewers grind their teeth. But then again, that issue is a consequence of the racist casting decisions made by Audiard and his casting directors, Christel Baras and Carla Hool.

“Que viva el cine, que viva México y que viva Emilia Pérez,” claimed Spanish director and jury member J.A. Bayona when announcing Emilia Pérez as the winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes 2024. This line and the pride in Bayona’s voice is such a perfect summary of how misguided and ignorant the European and American industries are regarding Latin American representation.

“Oh, how progressive we are,” this jury (lacking in Latin American members) probably thought while clapping themselves on the back as they arrived at the astonishing conclusion that Emilia Pérez accurately portrayed México and its issues.

Here’s the thing. Even if we could turn a blind eye to Emila Pérez’s non-existent sense of empathy, exploitative nature, and how offensive it is toward México, we still have a boring piece of cinema with forgettable music, half-baked characters, and a grisly visual identity.

Mexican cinema has tried to make the problem visible and bring the common citizen closer to understanding it; Tatiana Huezo’s Prayers for the Stolen and Everardo González’s A Wolfpack Called Ernesto, for example, address the roots and consequences of cartel presence on vulnerable people through empathy and without ever showing a single frame of violence on camera.

In Fauna, Nicolás Pereda uses satire to ponder on how the romanticization of narco culture, through media such as Narcos México (a Netflix production), has turned it into a quotidian and normalized element in Mexican society. These are the direct opposite of Audiard’s grotesque attempts at making narco culture a spectacle.

If you want to understand and empathize with what is happening in México, I strongly advise you to seek out the films I mentioned. At the end of the day, Emilia Pérez is nothing more than the cinematographic representation of that meme about a white woman saying “gracias” to a waiter at a Mexican restaurant.

Emilia Pérez is now streaming on Netflix.