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MEXICO CITY — The movie “Emilia Pérez” has finally hit the big screen in Mexico City — the principal setting for the genre-bending musical about narco-violence and transgender culture that just garnered 13 Oscar nominations, including best picture.
The reception has been frosty at best.
In its opening last weekend, Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language, French-made melodrama finished eighth in Mexican box-office receipts, well behind other less celebrated Oscar hopefuls, such as “Conclave,” a Vatican mystery, and “Flow,” an animated feature from Latvia.
And near-empty screening rooms in recent days suggest that viewer numbers are diminishing amid a mostly hostile — if not outright indignant — audience.
“A waste of time,” said Areli Vázquez, 24, a psychology student leaving a multiplex on a recent evening. “At the end you’re left with no clear message about los narcos, about the trans issue, about the disappeared …. just a superficial look at all of these matters.”
Added Carmela Espinoza, 67, a retired primary school teacher: “It was offensive and made fun of Mexicans.”
The acclaimed novelist and historian runs Mexican government publishing house El Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Finding people who didn’t hate the movie wasn’t easy, but there were some, such as Omar Robles, 42, whose curiosity was piqued by the social media firestorm directed at the film.
“I didn’t really like the movie, but I don’t think it was as bad as they say,” said Robles, an Uber driver. “It shows the reality of Mexico. And we Mexicans don’t like it when people speak badly about us. But the film doesn’t lie. Everything it shows happens, and sometimes it’s even worse. I would recommend it.”
The movie tells the story of a brutal drug kingpin, Manitas del Monte, who, for reasons that remain obscure, decides to fake his own death and undergo a sex-change procedure. He emerges as Emilia Pérez, a philanthropist who puts her illicit fortune into a charity to help people find loved ones who “disappeared” in the cartel violence she once fomented.
Audiard, the film’s French director, has said he aimed for a jarring cinematic experience, something over the top.
“You’re in a narco movie and, then, bam, you’re in a telenovela,” he told Variety, comparing the film and its idiosyncratic song-and-dance sequences to an opera. “I wanted this floating thing,” added Audiard, who received an Oscar nomination for directing.
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The movie re-creates some of Mexico’s most doleful scenes: desperate women handing out images of missing loved ones, people sifting throughdirt in search of remains, and gunmen leading away hooded captives, likely never to be seen again.
Still, some of the most pointed pushback has come from Mexico’s “collectives,” grass-roots volunteers — mostly women — who search for the more than 100,000 disappeared, often risking their lives. In the movie, cartel gangsters appear to provide guidance to searchers about where to find clandestine graves.
“The narcos never give us information about how to find our relatives,” said Virginia Garay Cazares, 53, whose son, a hot dog vendor, was 19 when he disappeared in 2018. “And no one gives us money to help, either. We pay for everything ourselves.”
Critics say the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is trying to downplay how people have disappeared in recent years.
“It’s fine with us if the director of this film wants to become famous,” said Garay, who heads a collective. “But why didn’t he come and talk to us? Then he could have presented reality like it is. Not like he imagines it.”
In line with the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who pick the Oscar nominees, reviewers in the United States and Europe have generally celebrated “Emilia Pérez.”
“A lawyer, a kingpin and his wife walk into a musical, and ‘Emilia Pérez’ is born,” reviewer Robert Abele wrote in The Times, labeling the film a “full-bodied, colorful epic about transformation, redemption and finding one’s voice in a hard world.”
Most of those positive reviews appeared before the torrent of objections from Mexico gathered critical mass.
‘Emilia Pérez’ thinks it’s in a transgressive tradition. Instead, it turns out like every other narco movie. The director falls for one of the worst stereotypes.
In the view of many in Mexico, “Emilia Pérez” traffics in distortion and stereotype. The critics say the gang leader’s metamorphosis defies reality, and that the kindly, do-gooder persona of Emilia Pérez mocks the victims who suffered during her former, malevolent reign.
The film “always maintains an implausible tone, colorful, neon, with a Mexico that is more background than substance,” columnist Alejandro Alemán recently wrote in the newspaper El Universal.
Mexican filmmaker Camila Aurora has released a short parody of “Emilia Pérez” that mocks all things French, from baguettes and berets to wine and thin mustaches. The spoof, “Johanne Sacreblu,” has more than 2 million views on YouTube as of Jan. 31.
However, some here argue that outrage about the film may reflect a collective sense of denial about how much violence has ripped asunder the fabric of Mexican society.
“Ask yourself: Why does a film make a greater scandal than the reality that it is trying to present?” columnist Pascal Beltrán del Río wrote in Mexico’s Excélsior newspaper.
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Critics also note that none of the three principal actors is Mexican. A Spaniard, Karla Sofía Gascón, commands the title role, while U.S.-born actresses Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña also star.
Saldaña was nominated for an Oscar as supporting actress, while Gascón garnered a nod as lead actress — becoming the first openly transgender actor to be so honored.
That hasn’t prevented scorn from the LGBTQ+ community in Mexico and elsewhere. GLAAD, the advocacy group, declared that “Emilia Pérez” presented “a profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman.”
Deepening the controversy was the sudden resurfacing of several old social media posts from Gascón expressing incendiary views on Muslims, George Floyd and diversity. In a statement this week through Netflix, which is distributing the movie, the actor said she was “deeply sorry to those I have caused pain.” She later deactivated her X account.
Even though the film was shot in France, not Mexico, it has some authentic touches: The movie opens with the plaintive, recorded appeals of a young girl soliciting old appliances and other scrap metal. The high-pitched plea does indeed loop daily across the capital as the recyclers make their rounds in pickups packed with junk.
But longtime Mexico City denizens point out incongruities: the prevalence of palm trees, misnamed or nonexistent institutions, a court scene with a jury even though criminal jury trials do not exist here.
“Pure opportunism,” concluded Jorge Volpi, a Mexican essayist writing in Spain’s El País newspaper. “Originality that emerges from vain and superficial impulse.”
The cascading criticism from Mexico may be having some effect. Just before the release here of “Emilia Pérez,” the director offered an apology.
“If there are things that, to Mexicans, seem scandalous in ‘Emilia,’ then I am sorry,” Audiard told CNN Español. “Cinema doesn’t provide answers, it only asks questions. But maybe the questions in ‘Emilia Pérez’ are incorrect.”
Still, the march to the Oscars proceeds.
Sánchez Vidal is a special correspondent.
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