As a trans woman, this is why I think Emilia Pérez is sub-par, disingenuous, harmful nonsense

Yeah that’s right, you heard me. Trans cartel musical Emilia Pérez is a bad film for multiple reasons, and how it won so many Golden Globes is beyond me.

Actually, scratch that, it’s plain to see why it did – only a film as spectacularly lacking in substance as Emilia Pérez could get a standing ovation at Cannes. Only something as vacuous in its messaging and yet so confident in its conviction could win Best Musical or Comedy in the same year as Wicked: Part One.

In its better moments, it can be visually striking (it can also be drab, but let’s give credit where it’s due). For example, Zoe Saldaña’s performance as lawyer Rita Mora Castro in “El Mal” has some great cinematography – but all this does is mask the film’s failings at tackling serious themes it’s ill-equipped to handle.

Emilia Pérez is trying to juggle a lot, and I mean a LOT. Director, producer and screenplay writer, Jacques Audiard, tries to juggle themes of corruption, gang violence, familial responsibility, and religious themes of repentance, none of which feel they have been given the attention they deserve.

What follows is a 132-minute long, almost infuriatingly sub-par musical with not a single memorable song, save for the laughably bad lyrics in “La Vaginoplastia”, in which Castro visits a urologist who inexplicably starts listing off facial feminisation surgery procedures after singing “from penis to vagina” with the kind of delivery best kept for moustachioed cartoon villains in blimps.

And then there’s the trans representation…

Emilia Pérez’s screenplay is so cisgender it’s almost satirical. In fact, its the single biggest indicator of Audiard’s gender identity. He might as well have the word “cis” tattooed on his forehead.

What’s immediately frustrating is that Emilia Pérez exudes a kind of confidence that’s almost nauseatingly sure of itself when it shouldn’t be. For example, lumping breast augmentation and nose jobs in with bottom surgery, or having Castro physically recoil at the effects that hormones have had on Pérez’s body, or when Emilia’s daughter says she smells “like a man.”

It’s a script that is so alienated from the process of transitioning as a trans woman – and yet blurts falsehoods out with such bold, intense conviction – that you’d think Audiard himself had gone through 500 different gender-affirming surgeries in one sitting.

But it’s the issues beneath the surface of its cringeworthy script that are the core of why I truly hate this film.

Audiard does not use the identity of his titular character in any meaningful way, and when he tries to it just doesn’t work.

Emilia Pérez is primarily a film about being reborn, and it tries to use the idea of transitioning to convey that through her transition, Emilia is trying to repent for the sins she committed in her time as cartel boss. The issue with this is that transition isn’t a moral decision, and the act of transitioning alone doesn’t somehow absolve you of your past self. It isn’t a death, nor is it a rebirth.

“Yet another psychopathic trans character to add to the pile”

Instead, Emilia continues to use contacts from the cartel, manipulates her family into trusting and spending time with her, becomes physically aggressive near the film’s ending when reconnecting doesn’t pan out, and even opts to threaten her wife, played by Selena Gomez, with financial blackmail.

None of this is framed in a way that makes any thematic sense and ends up showcasing Emilia as yet another psychopathic trans character to add to the pile.

To call this film awards bait would be doing a disservice to awards bait – Emilia Pérez, instead, is a film that thinks it demands respect just by the act of existing. The way that filmmakers reverently discuss it as some kind of revolutionary piece of cinema, or the way it is trying to weave itself into trans activism by pretending it is the pinnacle of representation, has left me feeling a particular kind of cynical.

Emilia Pérez is not just a bad film, but a disingenuous one. There are countless films that, while not perfect, have passion behind them in a way that makes their trans character believable and genuine. The point isn’t that trans representation must be perfect, but that it has to be earnest, and Emilia Pérez does not feel earnest.

Take Denise Bryson from the television series Twin Peaks. Appearing in the less-than-stellar half of the show’s second season. Denise, a trans woman in the FBI, arrives in the titular town to work alongside Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan).

Denise Bryson is not a perfect representation of a trans woman – jokes against her are sometimes framed in a transphobic way, her explanation of transitioning is dubious and muddled with crossdressing, and she suffers from the setbacks of pretty much all trans characters in pre-2000s media.

Yet, with all that, Denise is a beloved character because her inclusion feels genuine. It feels as though creators David Lynch and Mark Frost – both cisgender – were trying.

Emilia Pérez, meanwhile, doesn’t feel like it’s trying, but it’s certainly a trying watch.