The Oscar nominations are finally here and it’s a largely predictable batch, with a few surprises. I don’t have a strong opinion about who should or shouldn’t win. I just always find the annual tradition entertaining in a snarky kind of way.

One surprise was that the controversial French-made, Spanish-language musical, Emilia Pérez, received 13 nominations, a record for a non-English-language film. It’s so many nominations—including for Picture, Director, Actress (both categories), Song (two nominations) and more, it’s almost as if the Academy is trolling the film’s legion of haters. The Academy is definitely not doing that. It’s not that self-aware.

I’ve written about the film in a few places, which was one of my favorites of the year. I’m returning to it, briefly, because I took note of this phrase from the nominations story in the New York Times today, which called the film “a musical exploration of trans identity.” The article was co-written by Hollywood reporter Brooks [sic] Barnes. Barnes, in my view, has always had a bit of a casual attitude toward accuracy in his reporting and writing, something I have actually complained to him about in the past, in email, to which he actually responded, to his credit. He’s hardly the only reporter on the entertainment beat who doesn’t take the topic particularly seriously, but I still find it irritating.

“A musical exploration of trans identity” is not a bad shorthand for the film, for readers who have not seen it, will not see it and have generally not followed the awards season bickering. But, while it is a musical, it is not an exploration of trans identity in any but the most superficial sense, in my opinion. And this description plays directly into the arguments happening on “Film Twitter” which is probably no longer on Twitter X anymore, right? but has maybe moved to Letterboxd and elsewhere (BlueSky? Substack? Comrade Grozny’s Workers Party Monthly Plenary Session and Borscht Pit?). Wherever that chattering cohort now resides, this is by reputation a crowd that claims to love movies, but actually loves tearing them to shreds for not being sufficiently PC woke ideologically pure much, much more. And often does not watch them at all, or turns them off at the first sign of potential divergence from their suffocating groupthink.

The root question it seems to me is one of intention. What did the writer/director, Jacques Audiard, intend? If he intended to make an authentic exploration of trans identity and the Mexican narcos, man, did he fuck up. But did he intend that?

The question of intent can be interesting, but I am the type of critic that believes that artistic intention is mostly irrelevant in discussions of a work’s merit. If intention matters at all, it ceases to do the moment the film is out of the director’s hands. Once you watch it, all that matters is interpretation. Interpretation is tricky and sometimes all we can really manage is, well, I thought it was pretty good or I didn’t like it much, and that’s okay. You’re not required to have an interesting opinion or really much of an opinion at all. I know that might be shocking to those who live online, but it turns out to be true.

But if you do wish to render an opinion, it would be nice if it took the film (the book, the painting, the sex party, the five tier cake) on its own terms. In my view, this means, that you might speculate about the artist’s intention, initially at least, just so you can get your bearings, before rendering a personal judgement that might not actually take that intention into account.

If Audiard intended Emilia Pérez to be a dramatic musical with an authentic worldview, why is the story he tells so absurdly high concept? A notorious Mexican cartel boss hires a lawyer to help him disappear so he can undergo a long-sought gender transition. She emerges as Emilia Pérez, who struggles to make up for her past sins. That is an objectively ridiculous concept—if there is any intention to present a realistic story. But maybe Audiard is an idiot, and this narrative strikes him as reasonably grounded. I don’t know; but, you see, it doesn’t matter—because in no way does the resulting film support that interpretation, no matter what the intention. I really have only one clue to his intention—I am aware that he originally conceived Emilia Pérez as an opera. That may tell me less than I think it does, however.

If he wanted the film to be an authentic tale of the transgender experience, even before you consider any of the narrative dealing with that aspect, he already blew it by telling such a crazy, unrealistic story. To me, it seems obvious that the writer/director is using transition as a melodramatic stakes-raising metaphor, exactly the same way he is using the concept of the narcos. I can understand why these uses might be offensive to some people—some transgender people may not be particularly thrilled about being anyone’s metaphor, and the victims of the cartels have perhaps suffered too much to appreciate the finer points of how those horrors can be used to raise the stakes in a melodrama. But these are relatively small criticisms. Popular narratives have taken exactly these kinds of shortcuts forever, since the invention of popular narrative.

How does it make sense to criticize a high-concept, high-camp melodrama for not being realistic? That’s like criticizing the Fast & Furious movies for not obeying the laws of physics. It doesn’t make sense, but knock yourselves out.

It breaks my heart a little, though, that the first movie to ever have a trans woman Best Actress nominee—a fact that should have everyone who isn’t a MAGA fascist rejoicing, regardless of whatever their frankly cinema-illiterate hot takes might be—is being so completely trashed by the left. The level of savage vitriol and Manichean simple-mindedness is deeply depressing.

You know what? I hope they win everything.