Beyond Bad Tweets, Latinos Would Like a Word with ‘Emilia Pérez’ — Opinion
Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón’s recently resurfaced tweets — including one that posited Adolf Hitler “simply had his opinion of the Jews” — have put the 13 Oscar nominations for French narco musical “Emilia Pérez” in turmoil. The fallout is reverberating across Hollywood: Celebrities are distancing themselves, while some online detractors are even calling on the Academy to rescind her nomination.
There’s no joy in being right here, but: We told you so. Latinos knew that “Emilia Pérez” — a film in which a cartel kingpin reemerges as a women’s rights activist — was a disaster waiting to happen. The debacle raises serious questions beyond Netflix vetting Gascón’s Twitter account.
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Namely, why did an industry that relies so heavily on Hispanics — who buy more movie tickets per capita than anyone — embrace a film that the very people who keep its lights on widely rejected? More troubling, why were Latino objections ignored?
The flaws of “Emilia Pérez” were always more disturbing than outdated tropes or its casting director’s absurd suggestion that the production couldn’t find qualified actors in Mexico. They suggest a deliberate effort by filmmakers, distributors, and promoters to exclude Hispanics from critical conversations.
Why Latinos Reject the Film
Analogies are imperfect, but to understand why Latinos are appalled by “Emilia Pérez,” imagine this: The Academy lauds a Klan rehabilitation musical set in the Deep South but shot in Paris. Its non-American cast speaks in British and Aussie accents, and the few Black actors are largely relegated to extras.
Latinos — especially those from working-class communities along the border — view cartels as the lowest of the low. These aren’t code-bound Hollywood thugs like Tony (“no fuckin’ kids!”) Montana — cartels show no mercy as they kidnap, torture, and dismember, including children. Their victims number in the hundreds of thousands with no end in sight, and it’s infuriating to see awards bodies celebrate a film that repackages suffering as a kitschy telenovela with garish musical numbers.
Equally frustrating is Hollywood’s obliviousness to regional class divides, which may explain why the few Hispanics who defend “Emilia Pérez” either live nowhere near the border, have financial ties to the project, or can afford to protect themselves from cartel carnage.
How “Emilia Pérez” Thrived by Sidelining Minorities
Director Jacques Audiard has argued that his film is an opera and, therefore, unreal. However, the success of what many Latinos consider a 21st-century minstrel show (complete with a European protagonist’s fair complexion conspicuously darkened to play Mexican) lies not in artistic license but a kind of cinematic arbitrage. The filmmakers and promoters exploited cultural barriers, assuring awards voters they were making history while knowing they were too detached from the people being caricatured to recognize the insult.
“Emilia Pérez’s” success has always hinged on sidelining Hispanics. Its producers are European and, with few Latinos in Paris, let alone on the governmental selection committee that selected it as France’s official Oscar submission, there was little pushback until it reached the global stage.
By then, it was too late. With Netflix’s backing and the decision to delay its Latin American theatrical release (via distributor CDC United Network) until after Oscar nominations were locked, the movie became unstoppable. “Emilia Pérez’s” fiercest critics are Spanish speakers who saw their concerns drowned out by an aggressive “For Your Consideration” campaign targeting awards bodies and trade media that are predominantly non-Latino.
Case in point: After actor Eugenio Derbez criticized the movie’s mangled espa?ol, he walked back his comments to American outlets — only to later reveal to Mexican media that his family had been targeted. Guess which version reached U.S. audiences?
Failures to Listen
To be sure, some American outlets did cover the unease among the few Latinos who had seen “Emilia Pérez” prior to its Latin American release. In November, well before its Best Picture nomination, it was reported that acclaimed Mexican-born and -raised cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto described it as “completely inauthentic.” But the sharpest rebukes, like renowned Mexican writer Jorge Volpi blasting it as “one of the crudest and most deceitful films of the 21st century” for its sheer incompetence, were initially limited to Latin American media.
Even if you believe Latinos are overreacting, the film’s blunders are blatant. Consider a now-infamous scene in which, according to English subtitles, Selena Gomez’s character tells her lover, “My p***y still hurts when I think of you.” However, in Audiard’s script, she describes her anatomy as her “pinche vulva” (f***ing vulva) — a cringe-inducing word choice more appropriate for a medical textbook than a steamy phone call.
Even the film’s Oscar-nominated songs are grating. For example, “Mi Camino” includes stiff, unnatural references to “séptimo cielo,” a clunky, literal translation of “Seventh Heaven,” an anglophone expression that doesn’t exist in Spanish. “El Mal” suffers from similar issues, with lines like “Los llevan afuera…” — a direct rendering of “They take them out” when native speakers would say “Los sacan…”
This isn’t nitpicking. Imagine the Academy awarding 13 Oscar nominations to a movie portraying a major American tragedy in which its characters refer to living in flats, consulting barristers, and driving lorries.
Worse Than Bad Tweets
Gascón’s statements may now make her nomination seem questionable, but how did a movie that butchers one of the world’s most widely spoken languages qualify for international and screenplay awards? We’re talking about basic vocabulary flubs, like using cárcel in official signage to refer to prisons when Mexicans typically say penitenciaría. It’s not just inauthentic; it’s careless filmmaking.
The cultural failings of “Emilia Pérez” are the logical result of a project that, at its core, never respected its subject. This is evident in Audiard’s own cavalier admission he saw little need to research Mexico.
For me, this begs the question: How are Gascón’s uncouth comments about minority communities (who aren’t represented in the film) more disqualifying of “Emilia Pérez” than its own director dismissing Spanish — the movie’s spoken language — as a tongue “of the poor”? One is unflattering of the lead; the other is a damning indictment of the director and his project.
Those who believe Latinos should accept these flaws might join Gascón in reexamining their attitudes toward minorities. It would also be a mistake to assume these criticisms stem from traditional views on gender; LGBT activists have been among the film’s loudest critics.
A Moment of Reckoning
This is ultimately bigger than “Emilia Pérez.” It’s about whether The Academy, in a time of collapsing trust in institutions, can honor cinema that moves, inspires, and respects audiences. How can the Oscars claim artistic authority while celebrating a film that sounds like a botched Google Translate experiment to over 600 million Spanish speakers in the U.S. and across the world? For all the uproar over A.I. in “The Brutalist,” at least it was trying to get Hungarian right.
Honest mistakes are one thing; knowingly lauding a culturally inept spectacle destined for a “past mistakes” exhibit is another. If the Academy values representation, it must go beyond symbolic “firsts” and recommit to its core mission of recognizing excellence in filmmaking. We need more than performative box-checking; it’s about having the intellectual curiosity and humility to truly listen to the people films claim to depict.
Gascón’s disgrace has given Hollywood a rare chance to right an egregious wrong. The question is whether it has the wisdom to heed those who sounded the alarm all along. For the sake of a craft I love, I hope it does.
Giancarlo Sopo is a culture writer and the founder of Visto Media, a public relations and marketing consultancy. Follow him on Letterboxd and Twitter/X.
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