The most-nominated non-English film in Oscar history, Emilia Pérez, may be set in Mexico with a Spanish script and song lyrics, but it was largely filmed in France and written by non-Spanish speakers, which has led to backlash from Mexicans who feel that the movie trivializes the country’s ongoing struggle with organized crime.
The Spanish language used in the film has also been criticized. Héctor Guillén, a Mexican screenwriter and producer, told the New York Times, “The dialogues are completely inorganic—what the characters are saying doesn’t make sense.” Despite being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song, songwriters Clément Ducol and Camille have even been accused of relying on autotranslate.
Recent drama about comments made by star Karla Sofía Gascón has shifted attention away from director Jacques Audiard’s own controversial comments, in particular an interview with the filmmaker in which he called Spanish “a language of the poor.” “Spanish is a language of emerging countries, a language of modest countries, of poor people, of migrants,” he told the French site Konbini back in August of last year.
Using languages other than Frech is not a departure for Audiard. Emilia Pérez is told through languages that are foreign to the director—primarily Spanish with English sprinkled in. The director’s previous work includes Les Olympiades, which featured French and Mandarin, and Dheepan, whose characters spoke Tamil, French, and English. “For me, there’s a music to language,” Audiard recently told W Magazine. “Not knowing the language gives me a quality of detachment. When I’ve directed in my own language, I get stuck on the details.” Speaking with French newspaper Le Monde about his decision not to write a musical in his native language, he was far more blunt: “[French is] absurd… an embarrassing language.”
During a news conference before the film’s release in Mexico, where it has flopped at the box office, Audiard said he apologized if he handled a delicate subject “too lightly.” In a different interview, he said that “cinema doesn’t provide answers; it only asks questions, but maybe the questions in Emilia Pérez are incorrect.” (He has also said that he didn’t study Mexico much before making the film.)