It Won Four Golden Globes and Dominated Oscar Nominations. It’s Offensive on Multiple Levels.

Emilia Pérez is a musical set in present-day Mexico that tells the story of its titular character.

It's also the precise sort of preening cinematic onanism that Hollywood types like to think of as visionary.

The film’s hyperactive pursuit of the gee-whiz blurb has led many to describe the film as “defying,” or some equivalent term.

The main reason Emilia Pérez doesn’t scan as a conventional movie musical is because, as a movie musical, it’s completely incompetent.

With the exception of Gomez , no one onscreen is an observably talented vocalist.

The film has no unifying musical aesthetic to speak of: Nearly every song feels like a phoned-in mashup of clichés pilfered from pop, rock and hip-hop.

After all, the idea that what individual people choose to do with their bodies redounds to “societies” and “souls” is the driving logic behind nearly every brand of bigotry under the sun, and transphobia especially. What are we really doing here? That Emilia Pérez never even seems to ask itself this question tells you all you need to know about how little it thinks of its characters, its themes, and you..