As Emilia Pérez lands an impressive 13 Oscar nominations, the film has sparked a fierce conversation around its portrayal of trans identity — and whether it’s doing more harm than good.
The Spanish-language French musical crime film, directed by Jacques Audiard, follows a Mexican cartel leader, played by Karla Sofía Gascón, who transitions into a woman with the help of a lawyer.
While the film has been lauded for its direction, music, and performances, its depiction of trans identity has drawn sharp criticism, with leading LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD calling it a “step backward for trans representation”.
Editors of LGBT magazine Them added that the film perpetuates an idea of “transness so completely from the cis imagination” while film critic Lisa Laman of Culturess noted the film focused excessively on surgeries and featured just one trans character in the cast.
The controversy intensified last month when a series of resurfaced tweets by Gascón were labelled racist, Islamophobic, and misogynistic. Among the offensive posts was a comment about co-star Selena Gomez, calling her “a rich rat,” as well as a troubling thread about George Floyd just days after his tragic death in 2020, as reported by Variety.
Addressing the growing controversy this week, Gomez admitted “some of the magic has disappeared” around the film.
“I’m good. I’m really good. Some of the magic has disappeared, but I choose to continue to be proud of what I’ve done, and I’m just grateful,” Gomez said during a panel at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
She added that she lives “with no regrets”, telling audiences “I would do this movie over and over again if I could.”
Despite the accolades, the film has proven divisive within the trans community, with Gascón’s problematic tweets only adding to the mounting criticism.
On social media, numerous viewers have echoed the sentiment, pointing out the problematic representation.
Unpacking harmful tropes
Speaking to PEDESTRIAN.TV, Cerise Howard, the outgoing program director at Melbourne Queer Film Festival, shared her “highly ambivalent” reaction to the film. While she appreciated the “exuberance” of the production — particularly the choreography and performances — she expressed concern over the outdated tropes used to portray the trans protagonist.
“If it weren’t such a high-profile film, the stakes would be less high. Rather than being able to celebrate outright that an out trans actor has been nominated for an Academy Award, I can’t help but wish this breakthrough had come with a film that didn’t perpetuate some of the uglier tropes long attached to the cinematic representation of trans folk – and of transfeminine folk, particularly,” Howard said.
She pointed to examples ranging from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho to Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs and even the more camp Bond villains where gender nonconformity has been linked “in a sensational way with murderous intent and action.”
“Generally in a lot of cinema, one of the markers of villainy has been some sort of effeminacy. Emilia Pérez leans heavily into that tradition,” she explained.
Howard also criticised the film for leaning on outdated narratives about trans identity, such as the idea that transitioning means “burning everything down” and becoming someone entirely new, which she called an “old-fashioned view.”
“Then there’s things like that bizarre song where she sings about being half man, half woman, which is not how trans people think of themselves,” Howard said. “And that’s not how a non-binary person thinks of themselves.”
Reflecting on Gascón’s problematic tweets, she noted an “unfortunate” situation for someone making big strides as a trans actor in the mainstream.
“From where I’m situated, it’s very unfortunate. (But) it’s probably unfair for any one person to carry that weight anyway,” Howard admitted.
More important here, Howard suggested, is what the film represents — even if there were nothing problematic in Gascon’s history.
“Just that this is the film attached to this quite potentially momentous shift is a bit of a shame. It’s not the film that we would want to point people towards and say, ‘see, this is who trans people are or can be’,” she admitted.
Finding better trans representation
When asked whether Emilia Pérez represents a step backward for trans representation, Howard stressed the need for more diverse and authentic portrayals of trans people on screen.
While she doesn’t categorize films as “good” or “bad,” she argued that a broader diversity of stories is crucial for better representation.
“What’s needed is for people to be able to access a wide variety of representation, which represents more accurately the breadth and diversity of lived experience. So if the only trans film people ever see is this, that’s a problem. Or if The Danish Girl or Dallas Buyers Club — for which Jared Leto won an Oscar — is the only film they see, that would be a problem”.
Howard said she welcomed that trans people can be villains or complex characters.
“And they don’t have to be sympathetic. But what is needed is generally a greater quantum of representation and broader diversity within it,” she told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
Looking at other films that better represent the trans experience, Howard turned to a number of examples like Levan Akin’s Crossing, Alice Maio Mackay’s Carnage for Christmas, and Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker, among others.
“Some of those films are quite fantastical, some are very grounded in reality and gritty, but they just all come from a more truthful place that’s not necessarily easy to articulate. (But) it is quite apparent in watching those films whether trans people or other gender diverse people have had a say in what wound up in the film,” she observed.
“It just resonates in a way that has an authenticity to it.”
Meanwhile a number of elements of Emilia Pérez simply don’t gel “and that’s fanciful notions about what being trans is”.
“It’s not about being half this, half that. It’s also not about undergoing every procedure imaginable all at once, because that’s completely ludicrous,” Howard pointed out.
“We know when it feels right and comes across truthful and it’s very easy just to ask us if you’re a filmmaker, to reach out and go ‘can I just run this past you?’ Or just bring us in from the outset to advise and consult respectfully.”
Lead image: IMDb
