Emilia Pérez is bad
This post contains spoilers of the Golden Globe winner Emilia Pérez.
The main question that stayed in my mind while watching was: “WHO WROTE THIS?” and mostly “WHO THOUGHT THIS IS AN AWARD WINNER MOVIE?”
This movie was a mess, most of the musical scenes are unnecessary, the songs are poorly written, many times simply replacing scenes that could be written normally, as a dialog. None of the main characters are interpreted by Mexicans, seeing them forcing the accents is very sad. I am not Mexican myself, but if this was a movie about my country, I would feel exactly the way they are feeling towards this piece of media.
The “Thai” scene got me cringing from start to end, and I feel like I'll be dreaming about the doctor singing “from penis to vagina”. And this takes to one of the things that annoyed the most was the transsexual representation (it is important to say I identify as cis and the things I know about the trans community is solely based in my friends and from things I've researched about the topic, so my opinion may not be the most valuable).
The first issue I saw was the way the whole thing “I want to be a woman” was presented, I know the character says she always wanted this to the doctor, but the only person she tells that is exactly the one she is trying to convince of doing the surgery (if I'm not mistaken, it was written on a diary Rita gave the doctor, something one can simply write what ever they want). The scene she is analyzing her body after the surgery helps to enhance the confusion, is she crying because she is happy, or because she doesn't feel good? and I don't think this is the best way to present her transsexuality. I get the idea of making the character change the identity into a woman's, for a reason or another, a good example is the Mexican telenovela “Por ella soy Eva” that does it well, the main character, a cis man, is only using a female identity to help the woman he loves, making sure to tell the public he still identifies as a man, something I don't see in Emilia Pérez. Everything that she does feels like she is using the new identity for her own gain, like approaching the Rita at the party or her redemption, that was simply too abrupt. The way she treated Rita before and after the surgery, the way she starts to behave towards the missing cases, although she says she regrets everything “Manita” did, the movie doesn't show how it happened and again, doesn't feel true.
The talk about the missing people in Mexico, which is a real issue and has to be talked about, but when you look at who's telling the story, a French man, with little regards to the country as he said he didn't need to go there, he already knew everything he needed, and the casting, by saying there aren't good enough actors in the country, and I, from watching too many Mexican contents, like “La Casa de las Flores”, that already has great examples of great actors, including Cecilia Suárez that I think would have done a great Rita, know this isn't true, makes me wonder about him really caring about the cases or only using it as (and Mexico itself) a prop to his movie.
It is tragical how this movie got to win too many awards. The actresses were fine, but that's it, winning the Golden Globes for best non english movie, when it wasn't the best at anything, when a great title like “I'm Still Here” was also nominated or winning best comedy/musical, when again, it wasn't a good musical, baffles me.
I like the lighting and photography, though.