No film has ever fallen from Oscar grace quite like Emilia Pérez in living memory, but then it had much farther to fall than any of the others.
The news is so hectic these days that it feels like you can barely get a moment to catch your breath, much less enjoy yourself. Look to your left — there’s Elon Musk, chainsawing his way through the federal government’s org chart. Look to your right! Donald Trump is shaking down rival nations for tariff bucks like a bookie dangling a French-Canadian skint out a fourth-floor window by his feet. Look straight ahead: That’s apparently our newest destination off in the distance, port of call Gaza City.
So much head-spinning news, and yet it seems like we barely get time anymore around here at National Review to have fun with it. Why so serious, after all? Only a Patrick Bateman–like sociopath could possibly find humor in all of this, right? Well, luckily a niche exists even for sickos like me, so it’s time to pause on the weekend, take a deep breath of nitrous, and discuss Emilia Pérez. Yes folks, get ready for The One about the Transgender Drug Lord Oscarbait Flick.
Emilia Pérez was nominated for 13 Oscars this season, falling one short of the all-time record set for a single film. (It would take too much space to list all the major categories; it was pretty much nominated for “Best Everything.”) This was heralded as a surprise by the Hollywood media when the nominations were announced on January 23, but since I am a conservative and not stupid, I recognize that it was in fact comically predictable given the political climate in Hollywood post-November.
I’m sure I don’t need to explain why to you either, beyond the barest description of the movie: A Spanish-language, French-produced film about a Mexican drug lord who fakes his death to live his life quietly as a woman? And it’s a musical? With both Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez? Shut up and take my money. (I’m sure you all rushed out to see it when it first hit theaters, right after you took me up on my recommendation of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist as an antidote to last year’s campaign season.) Perez’s success in garnering nominations from outraged, mulish Hollywood elites after Trump’s victory was foreordained, and I almost have to tip my cap: It’s downright athletic how Emilia Pérez presses nearly every single woke button imaginable, almost suspiciously so, as if created in a lab to play to critically fashionable political ephemera.
But alas, I don’t think it will be winning many of those Oscars anymore, and for reasons most of us did not see coming. For example, I don’t think it’s activist protesters who are going to take Perez down, even though “the Groups” have been out in force complaining about the film as early as November of last year. (GLAAD: “How dare you associate transgenderism with Mexican drug lords?” Mexicans: “How dare you associate Mexican drug lords with transgenderism?”) But Hollywood is still the same industry that patted itself on the back for Crash and Green Book; months of whinging and activist pressure wasn’t enough to prevent them from nominating this farce 13 times over.
No, the real problem is that it turns out lead Karla Sofía Gascón — the first-ever transgender Best Actress nominee, another woke Hollywood “milestone” — has been uh, hilariously unwoke. Back during worldwide Covid lockdown, Gascón was tweeting in Spanish about how George Floyd was “a drug addict and a hustler” and denying that all police were murderers. Years before that, Gascón was arguing that “Islam is becoming a hotbed of infection for humanity that urgently needs to be cured.” Gascón doesn’t understand why world opinion disfavors Hitler, it turns out. But nothing beats this take on 2021’s Oscar winners: “I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8-M.”
Well, maybe Gascón has a future writing opinion columns on Substack. But probably not as the Best Actress winner, because the publicity tour for Emilia Pérez has predictably gone to hell now that sleuths (read: paid opposition researchers from rival studios) dumped Gascón’s past words onto a liberal Hollywood ecosystem already torn by how best to demonstrate Resistance to resurgent Trumpism. “By awarding a statue to someone who speaks a lot like a Trump voter” is apparently one possible answer.
The cast and crew of Emilia Pérez are now eating each other alive: Despite a series of half-hearted apologies, director Jacques Audiard has bravely “disavowed” Gascón, who has been banned from flying to Hollywood on the studio’s dime for Oscar Week or participating in the remaining publicity tour at all. Meanwhile Gascón claimed the support of a visibly uncomfortable Zoe Saldana, who said she only wants to “experience the joy” of the movie’s awards season. (I am reminded of how we all appreciated the “joy” of Kamala Harris’s campaign season.) I couldn’t be happier to see the whole hysterical imposture collapse in upon itself, felled by the woke forces it conjured like some Hollywood House of Usher.
In recent months I’ve developed a peculiar fascination with modern wars where there’s really nobody to root for (the Spanish Civil War of the ’30s, the Iran/Iraq War of the ’80s, Alien vs. Predator of the ’00s, etc.), perhaps as a reaction to the sardonic bleakness of the modern era. I’m feeling the “whoever wins, we all lose” vibe these days more than ever, so it’s finally nice to stumble upon a situation where whoever loses, we all win. I’ve also been following Hollywood scandals since I was a teenager thumbing through Easy Riders, Raging Bulls — I particularly enjoy watching rival studios quietly knife one another by surfacing them during awards season. What makes this one so perfect is how quintessentially modern it is: the Woke Boomerang has finally turned in its broad razor-arc and is now hilariously mowing down those who launched it as it wings its way back around.
I am told by those who have subjected themselves to it that Emilia Pérez is, outside of its infamously viral clip, “a bit more clever than expected” (a quote from a friend whose tastes I generally trust); I will have to take it on faith, as I have not seen the film yet myself. (I am tempted to do so this afternoon, if for no other reason than a lack of anything better to watch on TV.) Its quality is irrelevant to me; what is forever hilarious is how it rode one final pre-Trump blast of Hollywood wokeness to awards season history and has now been savaged and beaten to a pulp for offending every possible racial, sexual, and political grievance-monger in the industry after its elevation. (To once again reiterate: It never helps when your lead actor gets caught making fun of the industry’s own pretensions while benefitting from them.) No film has ever been “milkshake ducked” quite like Emilia Pérez in my living memory, but then it had much farther to fall than any of the others. Let’s enjoy the mess while we can, secure in the knowledge that literally all of these people had it coming.
(Also, my guess is that it’s still probably better than The Shape of Water.)