ANALYSE – Nominated ten times, Jacques Audiard’s musical drama leaves with four statuettes, including best foreign film and best musical film at the end of a ceremony where French talents shone.
Favorite of the 82nd edition of the Golden Globes with ten nominations, French director Jacques Audiard’s musical drama about cartels Emilia Perez showed off his muscles on Sunday in Los Angeles. The feature film dominates the charts with a record number of four statuettes. Emilia Perez achieves the masterful double: best musical film and best foreign film. To this loot are added the trophy for best supporting role for Zoe Saldana and that for best original song.
Enough to support the ambitions of the French film, distributed across the Atlantic by Netflix, for the Oscars on March 3. Awarded at Cannes, Emilia Perez is France’s candidate in the best foreign film section and can hope to glean nominations in the general categories. As Anatomy of a fall last year. These victories at the Golden Globes, considered a springboard for the Oscars, were essential. Emilia Perez was rather shunned by the American critics’ associations, which earlier crowned Anora, Wicked, The Substance or The Brutalist. We needed a boost to stay in conversations. The good performance of Emilia Perez in the preselections for the English Cesar – the Bafta – where the film is selected fifteen times, is also encouraging.
The fabulous trifecta of The Brutalist
On the other hand, Emilia Perez bows in the best director sections, won by Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), best original tape (Challengers), actress (The Substance) and best screenplay (Conclave). This varied list of winners confirms that this awards season, which will culminate with the Oscars, remains more open than usual.
Sunday’s ceremony resembled a game of billiards. As soon asEmilia Perez was gaining the upper hand, The Brutalist was coming back in force. This river fresco lasting more than three hours, signed Brady Corbet and awarded at the Mostra, is the other big winner of this ceremony and asserts itself as the direct competitor ofEmilia Perez. This portrait of an architect, a survivor of the Shoah, trying to rebuild his life in the United States won a major trifecta: best dramatic film, best director and best actor for Adrien Brody, who takes a step ahead of his rivals the most serious: Timothée Chalamet (A complete stranger) and Ralph Fiennes (Conclave).
Two big surprises
The Golden Globes did not only provide clarification in view of the Oscars. In the best dramatic actress category, voters created a surprise by crowning Fernanda Torres. The 59-year-old Brazilian actress beats the favorites and great ladies of Hollywood, Nicole Kidman (Babygirl) and Angelina Jolie (Maria). His victory reflects the evolution of the Golden Globes, which have become profoundly internationalized. The tastes of the 334 international journalists are now aligned with major festivals (Cannes, Venice) and auteur cinema. Not sure that the older, male and American Oscar electorate – 10,000 film professionals – will follow.
Demi Moore, speech winner
Another thunderbolt of the same ilk, the victory of the Latvian cartoon Flow on the expected heavyweights that were Vice-Versa 2 et The Wild Robot. The dialogue-free animal odyssey of a cat trying to survive an apocalyptic flood is a Latvian-French-Belgian co-production. This result reflects a very good night for French cinema.
In the best comedy actress category, Demi Moore won the statuette, driven by the originality of the horrific fable by Parisian director Coralie Fargeat. The 62-year-old actress gave one of the most beautiful speeches of the evening, which will be a formidable campaign argument. Hollywood loves comebacks. “I’m in shock, it’s the first time I’ve won something. 30 years ago, a producer called me a popcorn actress. I believed it. I thought I had finished my career. I received the script for The Substance at the lowest moment of my life. Thanks to Coralie for believing in me”greeted the star of 90s blockbusters, “Thank you for this gift of letting me practice a profession that I love”. With five Golden Globe nominations, The Substance has every chance of making waves at the Oscars.
Another notable intervention, that of Sebastian Stan, crowned best comic actor, for his role as a disfigured actor in A Different Man with also quite gory accents. The 42-year-old Romanian-American actor called for better representation and acceptance of disability and recalled how his two films A Different Man and the Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice were difficult to produce given their sensitive subject matter.
Anora in a bad situation
Winner of the Best Supporting Actor trophy for A Real Painroad trip to Poland’s concentration camps, the star of Succession Keiran Culkin brought a smile to his face when he explained that he didn’t remember his acceptance speech after drinking too much tequila.
This 2025 list also features big losers. Dune 2 by Denis Villeneuve and especially the palme d’or Anora leave empty-handed and see their shine tarnished in view of the next rounds which are the nominations of the actors’ union at the end of the week and those of the Oscars, expected on January 17. Steamroller of North American cinemas, Wicked consoles himself with the price of box office success.
