Favorite of Oscars, “Emilia Pérez” is in turmoil while racist tweets from its main actress have been exhumed. The film was already criticized by Mexican communities and LGBT.
On Wednesday August 21, 2024, spectators discovered in cinemas Emilia Pérezdirected by Jacques Audiard. The feature film had already won two awards in Cannes (the female interpretation prize for its four actresses Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez And Adriana Paz, and the jury prize), he then won four Golden Globes on January 5, 2025 (best film, best actress in a supporting role for Zoe Saldaña, best film in a foreign language and best original song).
WhileEmilia Pérez Dominated the Oscar race with 13 nominations, the film campaign has experienced a turnaround in recent days. Tweets from Karla Sofía Gascón (named for the Oscar for best actress) were exhumed on the social network X: she describes Islam as “infection home for humanity”; Mocking the anti-racist movement that emerged in the United States after the death of George Floyd (an African-American man killed by police in 2020), whom she described as a “drug trafficking”; Or the diversity of the Oscars (about the 2021 ceremony: “I do not know if I saw an Afro-Korean festival, an demonstration of Black Lives Matter, or a parade of March 8”).
Karla Sofía Gascón, who is the first transgender woman named to the Oscar for best actress, defended herself to be a racist in an interview with CNN and refuses to withdraw from the Oscar race. The question is now whether the controversy in which Karla Sofía Gascón will have a direct impact on the chances of the film at the Oscars. Netflix, a film distributor in the United States, withdrew the actress from all her promotional campaigns and images, report the American media like The Hollywood Reporter. According to Variety, the streaming platform refuses to cover the expenses of the actress linked to the award ceremonies, as is traditionally the case.
At this stage, it is difficult to know, however, whether this turnaround will cost Emilia Pérez All his chances of winning an Oscar. On the other hand, it would seem that the chances of Karla Sofía Gascón to win the Oscar for best actress are definitively annihilated. The 97th Oscar ceremony takes place on March 2, 2025 in Los Angeles.
The film Emilia Pérez was already very criticized
Before the controversy, Emilia Pérez was already widely criticized by the communities represented in the feature film, namely the transgender and Mexican community. On Rotten Tomatoes, the feature film wins the distressing note of 18% of positive opinions, against 73% of the press.
The LGBT and Transgender community deplored a caricatural image conveyed by the musical by Jacques Audiard. The American association Glaad first denounces a “retrograde portrait of the trans woman”. What is criticized for the film, in particular, is that the transition of its protagonist implies a total moral transformation of his character: “Gender transition is not a moral decision, and transition alone cannot You absolve your past, “writes the journalist Trans Amelia Hansford on the Pinknews site. “It is neither a death nor a rebirth”.
In addition, in Mexico, we criticize Emilia Pérez to instrumentalize real dramas that strike the country, while offering an “inauthentic” vision of the country. Mexican critic Gaby Meza deplores the BBC that the musical “exploits for entertainment the tragedy that Mexico experiences with drug trafficking and disappearances in this context of violence”. The feature was actually shot in the Paris region and without anyone in the team or almost being of Mexican origin. Jacques Audiard himself admitted to the interview that he “did not study [le Mexique tant que ça. Ce que j’avais à comprendre, je le savais déjà un peu”.
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