What’s going on with the Oscars? March 2 will see the 97th edition of Hollywood’s annual temperature check, the yearly chance to gauge how film industry voters see (or rather, want to see) themselves. The Best Picture category is usually reserved for films that telegraph their solemn prestige. And yet this year, there are two films nominated for Best Picture that have thrown all their ideas at the wall and dispensed with good taste entirely. It’s even more amusing when you remember that the two auteurs behind The Substance and Emilia Pérez aren’t American, but French.
The Substance, a zany body horror about an actress aging gracelessly out of Hollywood, was a comeback vehicle for 62-year-old Demi Moore, and indie film distributor Mubi’s biggest financial success yet, grossing almost $77 million worldwide against its $17.5M budget. As for Emilia Pérez? The Spanish-language musical, which was shot entirely on a soundstage in France, follows a transgender Mexican drug lord who undergoes gender affirming surgery, goes into hiding and reunites with her family, Mrs Doubtfire-style, without revealing her former identity. In the film’s second act, she starts a charity in an attempt to atone for her cartel’s past crimes. The pop star Selena Gomez plays a blonde cartel wife, and there is a jaunty number called “La Vaginoplastia” (it’s about exactly what you think it’s about). It is the most nominated film at this year’s Oscars, up for 13 awards.
A few weeks ago, trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón (“Emilia Pérez” herself) might have been a frontrunner for Best Actress. Both Gascón and the film had been gaining momentum since Netflix bought the film after the Cannes Film Festival, where it won both the Jury prize and a surprise Best Actress award for its four main actresses. It went on to win four Golden Globes. Then Gascón ended up in trouble for a series of old posts on X that were so offensive that Netflix took her face off the film’s posters.
There is no coming back for Gascón, who issued a lacklustre apology in which she stated that she believed “light will always triumph over darkness.” Meanwhile, the film’s director, Jacques Audiard, said “I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to”. Netflix spent the ensuing weeks throwing their weight behind Zoe Saldaña, who plays Rita, the beleaguered lawyer tasked with managing the logistics of Emilia’s increasingly complex life. She appears in most scenes, competently stomping her way through several solo numbers. Saldaña is up for Best Supporting Actress, though her character, the audience surrogate, is clearly a leading role. As of February 18th, Oscars voting has officially closed. We will simply have to wait to see if the fallout from Gascón’s posts, which took aim at Muslims, George Floyd and the increasing diversity of the Oscars themselves, has impacted Emilia Pérez’s wider campaign (though last weekend, it won two BAFTAs). Still, online backlash didn’t end up hurting 2019’s Best Picture winner, Green Book.
The film features a trans protagonist played by a trans actress, and so champions of Emilia Pérez may have seen the decision to back the film as progressive (that it isn’t in English has possibly helped its credibility, too). Too bad then, that the film’s tone is fatally earnest, leaning into gritty crime drama rather than knowing, mischief-making glee.
Audiard has maintained that the film is an opera, and so its treatment of serious matters – such as gender-affirming healthcare and Mexico’s disappeared – should not be judged for its subtlety or realism. Certainly, Emilia Pérez is neither of those things. The aforementioned “La Vaginoplastia” features tone-deaf lyrics about the forensic details of surgery and a chorus of smiling patients in wheelchairs. It is directly followed by a solemn song exchange between Rita and a surgeon (who immediately misgenders Gascón’s character) in which they announce that “Changing the body changes the soul.” Fresh from surgery, a heavily bandaged Emilia lifts her hospital gown and stares lovingly into a hand mirror pointed at her crotch. (Perhaps, one day, trans people will be able to reclaim the film as a tacky camp classic.) In another tuneless number, Emilia’s children remark that she smells like their late papa – “like mint, mezcal and guacamole,” as though it wasn’t already clear that no actual Mexicans were involved in the making of the film. There are other problems: the songs are bad, the pacing is all over the place, and Audiard’s interest in trans identity is perfunctory at best. Many have despaired in particular at the way Emilia’s transition is presented as a crude metaphor for absolution. As a man, she is a criminal; as a woman, she is suddenly a saint. It’s funny that Gascón’s blind spots have been the film’s undoing, and not its own.
[See also: Mickalene Thomas’s ode to Black joy]
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