The Emilia Pérez Disaster: When Hollywood's "Diversity" Becomes a Slap in the Face

Poster for Emilia Pérez (2024)

In today's media landscape, audiences are starving for bold representation and untold stories. After decades of stereotyped and convoluted cultural representation in Western media, Emilia Pérez (2024) arrived with what seemed like a promise of real change. A musical crime drama about a Mexican drug lord who transitions into a woman and seeks redemption? Directed by acclaimed French filmmaker Jacques Audiard? With its queer protagonist, colorful aesthetic, and political undertones, it had all the ingredients for a cinematic breakthrough that could have re-centered the existing rhetoric surrounding Mexican and queer realities. Instead, we got a fever dream of queer clichés and a narrow-minded European fantasy of Mexico—a superficial spectacle that stumbles clumsily over the very identities it claims to uplift.

If there's one thing audiences can agree on, it's that Emilia Pérez is ambitious. But ambition without understanding is a surefire recipe for disaster. The film doesn't just miss the mark—it forgets its target altogether.

Mexico?

From the opening scene, it's crystal clear: this isn't Mexico. Shot in Paris by a European director who claimed he already knew everything he needed to capture Mexican culture, the film serves up a hyper-stylized telenovela dystopia. We're fed dusty deserts, violent cartels, and exceedingly tragic backstories—a grotesque disconnect from reality.

Spanish is spoken with wildly inconsistent fluency. The musical numbers float in a vague cultural nowhere. Not a single moment feels grounded in the lived experiences of actual Mexicans. Instead of authentic representation, we're barraged with stereotypes that dishonor the gravity of cartel violence, migration, and systemic corruption while reducing an entire nation to its worst headlines.

Emilia Pérez doesn't deliver on its promises. Instead, it aestheticizes trauma, compressing centuries of Mexican history into a glittery Eurocentric fantasy.

When Transition Becomes a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card

The film's heart centers on Emilia, a former cartel kingpin who transitions and attempts to start fresh. On paper, it's compelling—a trans Latina reclaiming herself from a legacy of violence. In execution? Deeply, offensively flawed.

Rather than exploring Emilia's identity with care or nuance, the film sensationalizes it. Her transition becomes less a personal journey of affirmation and more a dramatic device to shock audiences and symbolize rebirth. Emilia receives an almost spiritual absolution, with zero regard for the consequences of her past or the real complexities of gender identity. Her transness becomes an escape hatch from accountability.

This aestheticization of the trans experience—equating it with erasure of the past—perpetuates extremely dangerous tropes. Transition doesn't wipe your slate clean. It doesn't dissolve culpability.

By portraying transition as a moral reset, the film not only insults victims of cartel violence but misrepresents trans people by associating gender identity with escapism or deception.

Lost in (Google) Translation

The casting decisions deepen the disconnect. Selena Gomez, despite her star power, learned Spanish for the role in mere weeks—and it shows. To native Spanish speakers, her accent is shaky, her delivery awkward. The message is clear: this film wasn't made for us.

The film's dialogue sounds like it was filtered through Google Translate. The Spanish lyrics lack rhythm and meaning, making the viewing experience even more baffling. Musicals rely on emotional clarity through song, but in Emilia Pérez, the songs just... exist. No cultural resonance. Little narrative value.

It's as if Audiard heard musicals were trending and decided to shoehorn one into his film without purpose. Instead of drawing from actual Latin American music traditions—corridos, reggaeton, anything authentic—we get generic pop anthems disconnected from the characters singing them. The music of Emilia Pérez has all the flash but none of the soul.

From left to right: Karla Sofía Gascón as lead Emilia Pérez; Selena Gomez as Jessi del Monte, Pérez's wife pre-transition; and Zoe Saldaña as lawyer Rita Mora Castro.

So Who Is This Really For?

We have to ask: who is Emilia Pérez actually serving? Because it's certainly not trans nor Mexican audiences.

Trans identities are reduced to harmful misconceptions. Mexican culture is distorted through an overwhelmingly European lens of melodrama and exoticism. Even the music is crafted without care—uninspiring lyrics, lackluster performances, zero authenticity.

With all its glittery superficiality that conveniently checks the boxes of diversity and progressiveness, it becomes obvious: Emilia Pérez was made by Hollywood elites for Hollywood elites.

A film that promised to amplify underrepresented voices became a cautionary tale about the dangers of representation without understanding. Emilia Pérez reminds us that representation goes far beyond what we see on screen. Without cultural care or lived experiences influencing what happens behind the camera, even the boldest stories ring hollow.

This isn't progress. It's performance.