The Oscar hype for Emilia Pérez is baffling, and the trans community deserves better

My Favourite Season is a monthly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that runs through the six-month "season" that is both his favourite and Moira Rose's. It explores all things awards in the lead-up to the big one: the Oscars, which are currently scheduled to take place on March 2, 2025.

Pretty much every Oscar season of late has brought with it a narrative of an underrepresented identity group finally getting its big moment. Think Parasite becoming the first film with a predominantly Asian cast (and in a language other than English, for that matter) to win best picture, in 2020, or CODA repping the Deaf community two years later. Think Ariana DeBose becoming the first openly queer woman to win for acting (for West Side Story in 2022) or Michelle Yeoh becoming the first Asian woman to win best actress (for Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2023). 

These narratives always feel horrifyingly belated (what do you mean it took until the 92nd Oscars to give best picture to a film not in English?!), but they are powerful nonetheless and often give awards ceremonies their most memorable and emotional moments. They also can matter quite a bit to the communities they are representing, allowing people around the world to feel seen on that kind of stage for perhaps the very first time. 

As we head into yet another Oscar season (the 97th annual somehow), all signs point to the Academy celebrating a community it has treated abhorrently throughout its near century of existence: trans folks. The object of their budding enthusiasm appears to be Jacques Audiard's musical, Emilia Pérez (which finally opens in cinemas this Friday, Nov. 1, before heading to Netflix on Nov. 13), a film that has won over audiences at film festival after film festival. It stars trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia Pérez, a Mexican cartel leader who enlists the help of a lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) to fake her death so she can live as her true self.

Many are predicting Emilia Pérez will get a slew of nominations, including one for Gascón, who would become the first openly trans actor of any gender to be nominated for an Academy Award, which would obviously be a really big deal. But we need the largely (read almost entirely) cisgender voting bodies of awards season to tread carefully when embracing this narrative — not because of Gascón (who is fine in the film), but because Emilia Pérez is a messy, insensitive, often baffling movie that does not seem to understand (or even care to understand) its titular trans character. And I promise you that going all in on it this awards season will age about as well as Green Book winning best picture.

Before we get into that though, some important background on trans representation at the Oscars: since Chris Sarandon's nomination for playing a trans woman in 1975's Dog Day Afternoon, the Academy has nominated nine cisgender actors for playing trans roles. Two of those actors — Hilary Swank for Boys Don't Cry and Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club — even won. Which makes the fact that no openly trans actor has ever even been nominated all the more appalling. (I say "openly" because some trans people have been nominated before they came out, like Elliot Page for Juno in 2008.)

To date, only three openly trans people have been nominated for Oscars in any category, compared to literally thousands of cisgender folks. English composer Angela Morley, who quite remarkably came out as a trangender woman in 1972, was nominated twice — for 1974's The Little Prince and 1976's The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella. Morley would be the only openly trans person ever nominated until 40 years later, when musician Anohni was nominated for her song from Racing Extinction in 2016 (a ceremony Anohni notably boycotted). Two years later, documentarian Yance Ford became the first openly trans man to receive a nomination, for his film Strong Island. But that's basically the entire history of Oscar embracing actual trans artists.

Obviously, it is completely understandable to be excited to add to that history with Emilia Pérez and give us our first openly trans acting nominee in Gascón. That has been the buzz ever since the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where it ultimately won a best actress prize for Gascón (shared with her co-stars, Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz). But the thing about Cannes is it doesn't have trans or non-binary people deciding its prizes — and rarely has trans or non-binary people in the audience reviewing its films. I was as curious to read what trans critics said about it, after it screened at festivals in Toronto and New York, as I was about seeing the film (here are my unimpressed thoughts, for what they're worth). And sure enough, the reviews had a lot to say.

Autostraddle critic Drew Burnett Gregory's review calls the film "a glorious disaster" with an "immense lack of curiosity" about its trans character. "There are many bad movies made by cis writers and directors about trans women," she writes. "But you've never seen a bad movie about a trans woman like Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez."

Gregory begins her review by saying she actually thinks cis people are capable of making great trans films, citing Alice Júnior and The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future as two examples (personally, I'd also add Tangerine, which just so happens to be directed by a filmmaker that does deserve all the Oscar hype this season, Sean Baker). But she makes it very clear Audiard is not one of them — and she's not alone. And that's the thing: if the Oscars give 10 nominations to Emilia Pérez, it's Audiard they're really celebrating, not the trans community. And if not Audiard, it's the distributor Netflix, a company that continues to give a platform to the vilely transphobic comedian Dave Chappelle (though I will give Netflix this: they also did a great public service by releasing Will & Harper, an extremely well-intentioned film that doubles as a guide to being a trans ally). 

But as the hype for Emilia Pérez continues to build in certain circles (Madonna has hailed it "a masterpiece" LOL), may I offer a plea. If Oscar voters — or voters of any of the million different awards of the season — really want to celebrate trans identity, they should consider two truly exceptional films actually by trans filmmakers, which came out this year: Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow and Vera Drew's The People's Joker. Both are bold and visionary in ways Emilia Pérez could only wish to be, and both are exciting examples of a burgeoning trans cinema that deserves to be recognized. And after all the nightmares we've put the trans community through during awards seasons past (see Albert Nobbs, The Danish Girl and especially Dallas Buyers Club), being extra-thoughtful about how they are represented this year is the very least we can do. 

(Interestingly enough, shortly after this article was written, both I Saw the TV Glow and The People's Joker were nominated at the Gotham Awards, which are basically the unofficial kickoff of awards season. Conspicuously absent from those nominations? Emilia Pérez. So maybe things are going to be OK after all!)

Check out our predictions for this year's Academy Awards, which will add categories as the season goes on.