An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Jacques Audiard, I was quite eager to check it out. Eventually, the journey made by this movie was pretty chaotic after all. Indeed, it came out first a the Cannes Film Festival where it was heralded and even won the Jury Prize. However, fairly soon after that, the movie started to be heavily criticized for its depiction of Mexico. The fact that the 3 main actresses (Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez) didn’t have any Mexican roots and actually spoke in poor Mexican Spanish didn’t help. Furthermore, even though the title character was played by an actual trans woman who was the first trans person to be nominated for an Academy Award, this movie was also criticized by the LGBTQ community. Finally, some controversial tweets from Karla Sofía Gascón came out and, at this point, pretty much everybody hated this movie, even if they didn’t actually see it. So, I have to admit that it was rather tricky to judge fairly this movie in spite of all this negative buzz. Eventually, I get it though. When I watch a movie with a character who is supposed to speak French fluently and they do speak this language very poorly, it does really annoy me so I understand if no one in Mexico cared for the damned thing. And, yet, I don’t think it was worthless though. Indeed, it was by far Audiard’s boldest movie, some wild musical fantasy made by a French director in France with a non-Mexican cast, even though it was supposed to be taking place in Mexico with obviously Mexican people. Usually, I’m not crazy about musicals but the fact that the songs were in Spanish made they more appealing, more than if they would have been in English. It also reinforced the whole idea that it was some fantasy coming from the mind of a French dude and not some realistic depiction. Concerning the story itself, most of it actually worked fine for me, up until they started to recover and identify the bodies of cartel victims. In my opinion, this turn of event was completely unnecessary and, obviously, so misguided. Once again, it pissed off the people in Mexico and, in this case, I fully agreed and they pretty much lost me at this point. Instead, they should have focused on how Emilia navigated her new life with Jessi and the kids. Eventually, in my opinion, the main reason they went into this direction was because they needed an excuse to have Rita stick around with Emilia. Indeed, in spite the title, they constantly focused on telling this story from the point of view of a cisgender woman which was obviously another mistake without mentioning that, eventually, none of them really felt like the main character after all. And, yet, I still think that Karla Sofía Gascón gave a solid double-performance here and, in my opinion, Emilia Pérez was a fascinating character. Sure, if the trans community felt that this portrayal was lame and even damaging, they must be right but I don’t think it means I can’t have my opinion about this movie based on my own experience, thoughts and feelings. Same thing about Audiard. Should he then make movies only about cisgender French characters? Indeed, even if it did win the Golden Palm at Cannes, ‘Dheepan’ was actually also a hot mess. But, then, it does seem terribly crippling creatively speaking to allow artists to invest themselves in only what they know and are familiar with. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it was an intriguing movie even if at least half of it was either misguided and/or really poorly handled.