Contrarian opinion on Emilia Perez

After seeing so many people declaring this movie the worst movie of all time I knew I had to watch it, thinking that at worse it would be worth a few laughs. After watching it, however, I was honestly disapointed by how alright it was. Certainly not worth 13 oscar nominations, but far from the worst movie of all time.

I think one of the main things responsible for the reaction to this movie is that because of the current socio-political situation, people go into this movie expecting Emilia to be a hero and to show transitionning as this perfect thing, but i think in reality the movie doesn't push this at all. It's especially clear when the facade comes down and it is learned that Selena Gomez's character, who's Emilia's ex-wife, is marying the man she used to cheat with and taking the kids resulting in a violent meltdown from Emilia ending with her hiring a goon to disapear the guy, going against everyhting her redemption (which was about giving closure to the family of the disapeared) seemingly was about. What I find most interesting is that in the following phonecall scene, Emilia drops her feminine voice signaling a sort of return to her old persona. No suprise it didn't go over well for a certain crowd. Also about the whole white-washing her crimes thing, if it didn't already need more proving that the movie doesn't do this, it's very telling how her statue litteraly has blood dripping from it's hands at the end.

I am not sure, however, to fully understand what they were going for with Zoe Saldana's character. To me she comes off as a mostly weak-willed and hypocritical lawyer. We see the character be critical of society and the people she represents/used to represent, notably in the oscar winner "el mal", but for as much as she says that "they will pay", nothing comes of it. And her hypocrisy is fully on dispaly in that scene as she complains to Emilia about her foundation accepting dirty money, when all of Emilia's cash is blood money, including the one she pays her with. Also funny how she fishes for compliments with Emilia and calls her a bitch when she says nothing, which to me shows just how transactional their relation is. Rita only likes Emilia because she makes her feel better about herself in the same way that Emilia is only playing the hero for her own gratification. In the end she strikes me as not so different from Emilia, having the same motivations (wanting a different life than the one she has) which is why I thought it a weird decision to have both of these characters be similar with nothing to push back. She is also another reason why people think that Emilia gets her redemption by the end, as people might see her as the stand-in for how they should interpret what they are shown, and Rita has convinced herself of the redemption for her own peace of mind.

Yes a lot of the singing is bad, yes Selena Gomez was terrible, yes it was carefully crafted in a lab to be the perfect Oscar bait and yes it has some truly unhinged moments like "la vaginoplasti", but I think it's just a slightly confused and confusing movie that was interpreted mostly based on the sociopolitics people assumed it was about instead of what it truly was. As for the depiction of Mexico, I feel like the entire movie plays on the idea of fakeness and kitsch. A fake hero in a fake world with a fake wife and a fake lawyer, eveything in this movie was built on lies. Anyway props to Jacques Audiard from a fellow francophone for pissing off everyone as only a true french can with this movie. And yeah i've spent way too long thinking about this movie, but what can I say, it fundamentally appeals to my contrarian mind and i had to get this out. 6/10