Acquired by Netflix, the multi-award winning musical drama at Cannes from the French director, will be submitted by the streaming platform in the categories of best film, best director and best actress in the Oscar race.
After his success in Cannes, Jacques Audiard knows that a marathon awaits him to defend Emilia Perez . His musical odyssey about the gender transition of a Mexican drug trafficker is already widely tipped for the Oscars. “ I'm terrified “, admits the filmmaker to AFP, during a day where he continues interviews in Los Angeles, before the film's release in American theaters on Friday. “ There's something worrying about mass success, it's not your real life “, he explains.
At 72 years old, the director will increase his return trips between France and the United States in the coming months. Because Netflix – which purchased its tenth feature film to broadcast from November 13 in streaming – intends to submit it in the general categories (best film, best director, best actress), well beyond the race for Oscar for best international film.
« There's something worrying about mass success, it's not your real life »
Jacques Audiard
After Telluride and Toronto, the artist projects Emilia Perez at the opening of the American French Film Festival (TAFFF) in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The campaign promises to be much more intense than in 2010, when his film A Prophet was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Film. “ It's as if you went from a provincial competition to an Olympic competition », blurts the Parisian dandy, scarf tied around his neck and leopard shirt under his blue suit.
First transgender actress at the Oscars?
Jury prize at Cannes, his unclassifiable film tells the repentance of Manitas. This powerful Mexican drug lord, at the top of the macho pyramid, orchestrates his disappearance to achieve his deepest aspiration: to become a woman, Emilia. Finally free to be herself, the ex-criminal sets up an association to help victims of drug trafficking. She also reconnects with her wife and children, who believe she is dead, by pretending to be a distant relative. Thanks to this dual role, transgender actress Karla Sofía Gascón made Cannes history by winning the Best Actress prize, along with the film's other actresses, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz.
It was the meeting with this Spanish woman and her unique experience, marked by her transition at 46, which allowed Jacques Audiard to reorient his film, by aging his characters. The title role, initially written for a 30-year-old, had not suffered enough to be credible, he explains. “ No matter how much I tried, it didn't work.he says. And when it arrives, it's a revelation. The Virgin stands before me, that’s obvious.» He adds: “ When you transition at 46, I can't even imagine what it was like before. What was his life and his pain? ? » This epiphany pushed him to reshape his transgender heroine, inspired by reading the novel Listen by Boris Razon. And could allow Karla Sofía Gascón to become the first transgender actress to be nominated for an Oscar.
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“It’s a film that must be embarrassing”
First written in the form of an opera, Emilia Perez is a “musical drama” at the crossroads of many genres: narco-thriller, telenovela, LGBT film… A mixture that seemed “ obvious » to Jacques Audiard, to be able to embrace the transition and the multiple facets of the main character. The filmmaker even claims a certain “ kitsch » liberating to approach with “ insolence » the social issues raised in the film. As when choirs sing in the middle of a hospital the refrain “ Rhinoplasty ! Vaginoplasty ! » « He had to absorb everything, it's a film that must be embarrassinghe insists. We're going to sing about things that are improbable. »
This risk-taking results in a surprising work, which the American press is already portraying as a favorite for the Oscars, well before the nominations expected in January. With this film “ critically acclaimed », Netflix « perhaps holds the winning combination this year » for the Oscar for best film, the magazine highlighted last week Variety . A possible coronation would crown the career of this already multi-awarded director, whose cinema is fond of different or understated characters. Dheepan Palme d'Or in 2015, followed the exile of Tamils in the Paris suburbs, Of rust and bone chronicled the reconstruction of an orca trainer amputated by her protégé and A Prophet plunged into the violence of the prison world. “ I'm curious », summarizes Jacques Audiard. Before concluding: “ I'm interested in people who are hard to describe, who we don't know how to name. ».
