The march of triumph for Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez began at the Cannes Film Festival, where the actresses—Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Adriana Paz—won the Best Actress Award as an ensemble. To date, the film has garnered 62 awards and 151 nominations. Recently, it swept four awards at the Golden Globes out of its ten nominations in the Best Musical/Comedy category, making it the second most-nominated film in Golden Globes history. The Oscars are yet to come.

While Emilia Perez, a flamboyant musical about gender identity, has become awards bait, it has also been criticized for its messy portrayal of a trans character, raising concerns about whether a cisgender writer-director can accurately or sensitively portray trans experiences.

The Spanish-language film, set in Mexico, follows Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldana), an underpaid and undervalued lawyer whose “idiot” male boss exploits her while taking credit for her work. Violence against women is a harsh reality in Mexico, where murders of women are dismissed as suicides. Rita’s frustrations culminate in a surreal opening musical number where she laments the societal acceptance of male privilege and female suffering.

Rita’s life takes a turn when a mysterious, raspy-voiced caller leads her to a hideout. There, she meets the infamous cartel boss, Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), a rough-looking man with scars, tattoos, and gold teeth. Manitas has an unusual request: for a hefty fee, Rita must facilitate his transition from man to woman. Having secretly taken hormone pills, Manitas reveals his physical changes to Rita, who reluctantly agrees to the task, as refusal could cost her life.

Rita embarks on a global search for a surgeon, leading to a comedic yet poignant musical number, The Vaginoplasty, set in a clinic where staff and patients dance while detailing gender affirmation procedures. A doctor’s quip about Rita’s "mannish" appearance underscores societal mockery of single women past a certain age.

Eventually, Rita finds a surgeon who agrees to perform the procedure after Manitas convinces him of genuine body dysmorphia. Post-surgery, Manitas stages his death and emerges as Emilia Perez, portrayed by a real trans woman who went on to make history by winning multiple Best Actress awards. Emilia’s grieving widow, Jessica (Selena Gomez), and her children are relocated to Switzerland for safety.

However, Emilia misses her children and tracks Rita to London, asking her to facilitate their return to Mexico. Emilia assumes the guise of a distant "cousin" but struggles to suppress her maternal instincts. Her affection forces Rita to remind her that she’s an aunt, not a mother.

A chance meeting with a woman searching for her missing son awakens Emilia to the plight of countless men and women who disappear due to cartel violence. With Rita’s help, Emilia establishes an NGO, La Lucecita, to trace the remains of the missing and provide closure to grieving families. But can Manitas’s violent past be erased by Emilia’s acts of redemption? Critics question her moral ambiguity, as she accepts funds from criminals and corrupt politicians for the NGO.

Emilia’s transformation is further complicated by lingering traces of her former self. Her children note her familiar scent: “You smell like papa—tequila and guacamole, leather and cigars.” Emilia’s domineering nature resurfaces when Jessica moves on with a new partner, leading Emilia to cut off her finances. Despite this, Emilia pursues a guilt-free romance with a woman, Epiphania (Adriana Paz).

In the end, Emilia cannot escape the shadows of her past. Divested of Manitas’s power, she faces the same terror and savagery he once inflicted. Critics argue that Emilia Perez offers a complex yet problematic exploration of gender identity. Harron Walker, writing for The Cut, notes the film’s conflicting messages: “[It] affirms Emilia’s claim to womanhood to a ridiculous degree… yet portrays her as a nesting doll of gendered selves.”

The film’s closing images of Emilia, brutalized and bleeding, pleading with Jessica to recognize her, reflect the harsh realities of patriarchal societies like Mexico. In such societies, being a woman often means living in constant danger. Thus, a man becoming a woman may not change society—it only rearranges the baggage of power and victimhood.

Deepa Gahlot is a Mumbai-based columnist, critic and author