Gender, power, and identity: The duality of Emilia Perez

Exploring gender, redemption, and societal norms through Jacques Audiard's award-winning musical drama

- DEEPA GAHLOT

The march of triumph for Jacques Audiard's Emilia Perez began at the Cannes Film Festival, where the actresses—Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, Karla Sofia Gascon, and Adriana Paz—won the Best Actress Award as an ensemble. To date, the film has garnered 62 awards and 151 nominations. Recently, it swept four awards at the Golden Globes out of its ten nominations in the Best Musical/Comedy category, making it the second most-nominated film in Golden Globes history. The Oscars are yet to come.

While Emilia Perez, a flamboyant musical about gender identity, has become awards bait, it has also been criticized for its messy portrayal of a trans character, raising concerns about whether a cisgender writer-director can accurately or sensitively portray trans experiences.

The Spanish-language film, set in Mexico, follows Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldana), an underpaid and undervalued lawyer whose "idiot" male boss exploits her while taking credit for her work. Violence against women is a harsh reality in Mexico, where murders of women are dismissed as suicides. Rita's frustrations culminate in a surreal opening musical number where she laments the societal acceptance of male privilege and female suffering.