Audiard had previously addressed the criticism, telling CNN en Espanol in a Jan. 15 interview, “If there are things that seem shocking in Emilia Pérez then I am sorry. Cinema doesn’t provide answers, it only asks questions…But maybe the questions in Emilia Pérez are incorrect.”
Gascón, however, challenged the film’s critics to go make their own movie. “Being LGBTQ, having those labels, does not remove your stupidity, just like heterosexuality does not remove your stupidity,” she told Vanity Fair in December. “What bothers me is that the people that say things like that [are] just sitting down at home doing nothing…Go create the representation you want to see for your community.”
Meanwhile, none of the above prevented the movie from racking up accolades, including a field-leading 13 Oscar nominations.
“What shocked me is that either people haven’t seen the film properly, or they haven’t seen it at all and are acting in bad faith,” Audiard told Deadline in an interview published Feb. 5. “The representation of the cartels in the film is thematic. It’s not something that I’m particularly focused on in the film. There’s one scene that deals with it.”
Opera, he emphasized, requires strong stylization. “It seems I’m being attacked in the court of realism,” he said. “Well, I’ve never claimed that I wanted to make a realistic work.”
If he had a regret, Audiard noted, it was that they didn’t film in Mexico, but funding options were simply better in France.