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This article was originally published on November 14, 2024.
On January 23, 2025,Emilia Perezwas nominated for 13 Oscars, including Best Picture.
Spoilers for the end ofEmilia Perez,which is streaming on Netflix now.
In death she is borne aloft by mourners as a life-sized plastic Catholic Virgin.
(The films stars took home a combined Best Actress award at Cannes.)
The film is supposed to be a portrait of women living amid Mexicos violence andfemicide crisis.
But as the movie builds up to Emilias death as the emotional climax, it loses any subtlety.
From the start Audiard sets us into these womens worlds ostensibly from their perspective.
Post transition, Emilia falls for Epifania, the mestiza wife of a man murdered in the drug war.
These characters promise a complex gaze into the Mexican society the film is set in.
That belief system is Latin Americas version of I dont see color.
Instead it says: were all mixed, some combination of Black, Indigenous, and European.
This helps symbolically unite the countries amid massive racial and class inequalities that benefit a white and white-adjacent bourgeoise.
Arguably, mestizaje also helps gloss over societal anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism.
From the start, though, the film seems to miss those cultural distinctions.
The way race determines class means that Latin Americas cartel leaders arent usually blue eyed European descendants.
The potentially nuanced reasons for how or why Emilia rose through the ranks arent ever explained or teased out.
Rita is the films moral consciousness, but the story is never told from her perspective or about her.
Emilias girlfriends Epifania is similarly flattened.
We know nothing about her save her status as a survivor of domestic abuse.
Tellingly, the most significant plot is about Emilias white motherhood.
She has two children and sends them to Switzerland with their mother Jessi while she transitions.
Then she brings them back to live with her in Mexico City, claiming she is their aunt.
She longs to run off with the charismatic Gustavo and she wants to take the children with her.
The film becomes invested in the two mothers, Jessi and Emilia, battling over custody.
Jessis personal desires and vendetta lead her to kidnap Emilia, to enable her escape with her lover Gustavo.
It reads as a way to redeem her white motherhood before her final sanctification.
Ultimately, before Gustavos kidnapping of Emilia goes off the rails, Emilia and Jessi reconcile.
In turning Emilia into a Virgin the film celebrates her and her redeemed motherhood.
And the films fuller message becomes clearer as Emilias death unifies the women across class and race.
Epifania sings her devotion to Emilia, alongside the other women overlooked by police and government.
Rita steps in to take care of Jessi and Emilias children: trans-racial adoption as assuagement.
The women of color, Epifania and Rita, are left to provide the emotional work of healing.
But if her death allows for her sanctification, the film doesnt quite know how to represent her life.
In a bizarre anti-trans trope, Emilia never fully just exists as a mother.
