Emilia Pérez is an insultingly bad movie. It might win Best Picture.

I was introduced to Emilia Pérez in the same way most were, through the baffling clip where Zoe Saldaña tells a doctor she wants to know about "sex change operations", in a sung conversation that leads to the perfectly so-bad-its-good delivery of "from penis to vaginaaaa". That alone made me decide to watch it with friends on a bad movie night. Then the Oscars gave the film a remarkable thirteen nominations, forcing me to wonder if the movie was actually good. Before and after viewing the film, Emilia Pérez haunted me. The discourse feels inescapable, and my mind races with thoughts on the movie. I believe the discourse around the film's depiction of transness and Latin American culture obfuscates the fact that the film is on most levels bafflingly incompetent.

When I began this article, I started with a plot summary. This was a logical choice, when critiquing a story such a summary is natural. The issue is that an overwhelming amount of the film has nothing to do with the plot. Not in a manner where the film is content to rest in a style, mood, or to reflect on various happenings, but in a scattershot attempt to speak on a variety of topics. The result is plots constantly being picked up and abandoned is that they cover each about as much as The Room covers breast cancer.

The core plot goes like this: Juan "Menitas" Del Monte (played by Karla Sofía Gascón), a notorious drug lord, recruits a lawyer (played by Zoe Saldaña) to help her find surgeons to assume a new identity as a woman, something she's wanted her entire life. The lawyer has Menitas' family moved to Switzerland and Menitas stages a fake death. Four years later, Del Monte, now Emilia Pérez, and the lawyer meet by chance and the lawyer helps Pérez reconnect with her family by moving them to Mexico City. After spending time together, Pérez eventually scares her ex-wife Jessi (played by Selena Gomez) into fleeing from their house to Jessi's lover after Pérez calls their kids hers. Pérez cuts off Jessi's money in response. Later, Jessi and her partner kidnap Pérez in a bid to get money, ultimately resulting in a showdown with the authorities where Pérez reveals her identity to Jessi. As Jessi and her lover drive away from the law with Perez tied up in the trunk, Jessi fights in an attempt to stop the car, causing an explosive crash which kills the three of them. That's right, the "penis to vaginaaaaa" move has a "bury your gays" ending.

This plot doesn't sound like a terrible movie, but the movie isn't about this plot. If it was, it might have started with an inciting incident directly to do with Pérez's desire to transition. Instead, it begins with Zoe Saldaña's lawyer character. I have been holding off on revealing her character's name because it forces me to start on a path I cannot finish. I am not equipped to talk on this movie's handling of race or Mexican/Latin American culture, and as such I don't have a definitive statement on the topic. I've seen many take offense at its portrayal of the cartels, and I've heard the film butchers an overwhelming amount of its Spanish dialogue, but I don't have the knowledge to fully understand these complaints. I do know that Zoe Saldaña's character, Rita Morena Castro, must have been born in J.K. Rowling's Maternity Ward for Babies with Racist Names because her name smashes together Puerto Rican icon Rita Moreno and Fidel Castro, two people who are not from her character's home of the Dominican Republic. It's the equivalent naming a French character Christoph Waltz Franco. I'll let that be an indicator of how well this movie understands the peoples of its setting as I return to how the film progresses. Rita Morena Castro does legal work for a cartel, getting an innocent verdict for an obviously guilty man. She hates the work, but she does it because she's struggling. With what, I don't know. The film doesn't elaborate on her financial state or background or on any reason at all why she needs money from duplicitous work.

But she does need money, and accepts an anonymous offer for more shady work. This work ends up being Menitas seeking her surgeries. Upon reading the movie's plot, I was confused as to why a drug lord would need a lawyer to organize the transition to a new identity through gender-reassigning surgeries. After seeing the movie, I am still confused. Castro has no expertise in the subject and only works for Menitas due to a fear of violence and an offer of money. Was there nobody that Menitas could trust due to loyalty? Did Menitas not have a personal doctor who would know far more about the medical system? Menitas claims to have been on hormone-replacement-therapy (HRT) for two years when meeting Castro, so presumably Menitas either had it prescribed or did a regimen of DIY-HRT. Either way, the body Menitas has in the scene would be near impossible for someone suppressing testosterone and increasing estrogen for two years. Menitas has no visible breasts, rough skin, and a lengthy beard. Moreover, nobody else knows of Menitas's regimen, including his wife.

All of this is the kind of incongruity that results when someone doesn't understand gender transition and attempts to write about it anyway. In a competent writer's hands, these facts that make things not add up could be answered in a manner that adds to the story. When Menitas speaks to the surgeon about her dysphoria before her operations, she reveals knew from a young age that she wanted to be a woman, but either repressed or hid that fact because she had to be tough and masculine to survive. This backstory could be beautifully extended to the modern day with Menitas being paranoid about her lieutenants discovering her secret and turning on her, with her binding her breasts as they started to grow, with guilt growing as she became less and less the person her family knew her as. Instead, Pérez's gender dysphoria is unexplored beyond its existence.

I expected to be offended by Emilia Pérez, but I wasn't. While the film fails to actually explore transness, even depicting it could be a noble endeavor as the world seeks to limit trans rights more and more. Instead I found myself utterly bored by the film. The main plot doesn't have a through-line. The conflict is about Pérez's transness in a society that rejects it, then it doesn't matter one bit after her surgeries. Then it's about Pérez and Jessi's kids until it's about the money until it's about Jessi's lover who we've hardly met. The film refuses to elaborate on its only connected plot with anything more than cause and effect. It doesn't reflect a theme or a broader societal point. It's nothing.

This lack of a through-line is especially a problem for the film's music. Of the film's sixteen numbers listed in Wikipedia's plot summary I would say seven are tied to the main plot. This might sound worse than it is, but songs in musicals often connect to the plot indirectly as a reflection on events, as an elaboration that is pulled into the main plot later, or songs could even be untethered from the plot, instead just giving the audience a fun time. But these songs still expand on themes or relationships, which almost none of Emilia Perez's songs do. Even if the writers didn't want to attempt a Sondheim-esque connection of every idea and every song musically, they could at least write entertaining songs.

Of the many songs in the film, the three I remember are “La Vaginoplastia” (the “from penis to vaginaaaa" song), "Papá", and some of "Lady" (which is a FAR worse song than I remembered). Nothing else stuck with me. I wish I could be diligent enough to relisten to the music and do a deep dive on my issues with the films sonic palette, but ultimately this film being a musical is unimportant to it. It doesn't make its songs important, it doesn't center its plot around its songs, and the songs aren't even good. Moreover, the vocal performances are weak throughout. The Oscar nominated "El Mal" sees Zoe Saldaña rap in an unimpressive thin voice that isn't aided by her terrible over-the-top choreography and the awful sound mixing that makes her almost-whispered quality barely intelligible. Emilia Pérez is nominated for Best Sound at the Oscars. The point of the song is that Castro is identifying people at a press event for Emilia Perez's work finding people missing due to cartel violence (a VERY SERIOUS topic the film spends a lot of time on considering it doesn't end up mattering to the story at all), and how they're going to pay for the evil they've done. They are never mentioned again after this scene.

The filmmaking in the musical numbers is also horrendous. This is noticeable from the film's first song, “El Alegato”. In the song, Castro walks through a market analyzing what she's going to say to the judge in the inconsequential murder case she's working on. People dance around and by her, while she doesn't do much herself. I wish I could comment on their choreography, but the film decided the audience wouldn't like it, so instead they keep the sequence in a medium close-up or closer before not backing up nearly enough to make the sequences ending tableau look good. It immediately zooms back in. Any time the film has a compelling image it's either too zoomed in to show it or the film immediately cuts away from it. Emilia Pérez is nominated for Best Editing and Cinematography at the Oscars.

Originally, I was going to have a section bemoaning how the film wasted a rather decent performance from Karla Sofía Gascón. She does bring a light air the film really needs, but she’s also a racist, so I don't feel the need to go easy on her. Her vocal performance is awful, which is completely baffling. How do you get cast as the title character in a musical when you're as weak a singer as she is?! Moreover, I also need to talk about this film's use of AI. According to this Forbes article by Tim Lammers, the film used AI voice cloning techniques to increase the range of Gascón's singing by blending her with French pop star Camille, who also co-wrote the film's music. This makes my blood boil on so many levels. How do you live with dignity knowing that you were cast while lacking the qualifications for the role? How do you agree to use AI to upgrade your performance when the industry went on strike (in part) to protest AI? How does a film company go through the work of using AI to upgrade their main stars vocal performance and let it come out still sounding bad?! Karla Sofía Gascón is nominated for best actress at the Oscars. She is the first openly transgender woman to be nominated for the award. That's mostly why I wanted to go easy on her, out of a sense of sisterhood. The issue is that when you spout the things she has it's clear you don't believe in a true sisterhood that includes women of every race and religion, and as such I don't feel a need to include her.

Emilia Pérez is a bafflingly incompetent film, but that's not what upsets me about it. It's that it does so much incompetent work while insisting upon its own greatness. It's one thing when a movie backs up that self-importance with a message or with quality work, but the movie simply doesn't. I would call the movie shallow, but that would be an insult to ponds. The statement would imply it has any depth whatsoever. When moments in the film come that are meant to be humorous or campy instead I'm just bored. Having Zoe Saldaña grab hair off a woman's head and grind it between her legs should be wild, shocking, or failing that at least cringe-inducing, but instead I'm just confused and exhausted.

I think that no matter what, I'm going to be disappointed in this article. I don't want to be so negative, and I went into Emilia Pérez expecting to not leave it so overwhelmingly unsatisfied. The film refuses to leave my head. Usually when I get stuck on a work like this it's because there's something that nags me about it in a good way. With Emilia Pérez, the film's existence nags me in the worst way. The film's discussion of queerness is behind the 30 year-old Rent. The camera shakes in static shots in a manner that looks unprofessional by the standards of 2009 YouTube videos. The filmmakers actively refused to do anything musicals are meant to do while making a musical. Emilia Pérez is not a movie, it is an insult. It is nominated for thirteen Oscars, including Best Picture.