The announcement of the 2025 Oscar nominees marks the countdown to the biggest and most respected awards ceremony in entertainment, and although I had a strong idea of which new movies would be nominated (thanks to the 2025 Golden Globe awards) that’s not saying that I wasn’t left bewildered beyond comprehension when a certain Netflix movie scored big with nods. I’m of course talking about Emilia Pérez (2024), the crime-thriller musical hybrid that follows a cartel boss’ gender transition.
I won’t lie, I was expecting Jacques Audiard’s drama to get some recognition at the 2025 Oscars, but I wasn’t expecting Emilia Pérez to receive 13 nominations. 13 nominations?! This puts Emilia Pérez above fellow nominees The Brutalist, Conclave, and The Substance, which make up some of the best movies of 2024. If you were to ask me, Emilia Pérez doesn’t even come close and frankly, I’d rather put myself through Joker: Folie a Deux again.
I have no doubt that this will go down in history as one of the most divisive movies to circulate cultural discourse, and not just in the history of the Oscars. Alas, what’s done is done, and all will be revealed on March 3 when the 2025 Oscars will air and for those who are still undecided whether you love or hate Emilia Pérez, hear me out.
Putting 13 Oscar nominations into context
Depending on a movie’s anticipation, marketing, and audience reception, singular movies can reach a relatively high number – just look at how the ‘Barbenheimer’ double bill influenced last year’s awards season. Unfortunately, Emilia Pérez is this year’s Oppenheimer (2023), and 13 nominations for a single movie means so much more than you may think.
Since the 2025 Oscar nominations were unveiled, Emilia Pérez has since been inducted into the so-called ‘13 Club’, an elite select group of movies that earned a grand total of 13 Oscar nominations at the time of their release. That group includes, but isn’t limited to the following movies:
Forrest Gump (1994)
Oppenheimer (2023)
Mary Poppins (1964)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Chicago (2002)
Shocking, I know, right? Not only has Emilia Pérez earned a place among movies that are considered to be cinematic staples, it has gone on to earn more Oscar nominations than the first installment in the original Star Wars trilogy, A New Hope (1977), and has the same amount of Oscar nominations as Stanley Kubrick had throughout his entire career. Excuse me, while I go and slam my head against a wall.
Jacques Audiard doesn’t care about trans stories, he just wants an Oscar
If you’ve seen Emilia Pérez and stand on the same side of the fence as me, then I hope you understand what I mean when I say that Audiard’s crime musical feels formulaic and manufactured for Oscar appeal. On paper, Emilia Pérez could’ve been a compelling and influential story, one that could’ve rewritten the representation of trans people and Mexican communities through an authentic narrative. Instead, it’s an unfortunate mess of three different plotlines, with a lot of head-scratching.
In addition to its voice enhancement controversy, GLAAD has described Emilia Pérez as a “retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” and many trans movie critics challenging Emilia Pérez for its ‘transition equals death’ treatment, the film has come under fire for its equally questionable portrayal of Mexican communities, with the BBC highlighting both the lack of involvement from Mexican individuals in the production of Emilia Pérez, and the mockery that the film makes of the ongoing violent hardships of drug war through its musical format.
Though my disappointment speaks for itself, that doesn’t mean I would tell people to avoid Emilia Pérez. If anything, I encourage you to watch it if you haven’t yet already, just so you can see how abysmal it is as both a drama, and a depiction of a vulnerable minority that’s already the target of an increasingly worrying social and political attack.
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rowan.davies@futurenet.com (Rowan Davies)
