By Camila González Revoredo for Estudio Silver
Two films named after women, Anora and Emilia Pérez, expose the way in which the industry awards prizes. One is a quest. The other, a manual of political correctness. While diversity becomes a strategy, Latin American cinema observes without patronizing and tells stories from experience.
At this year’s Oscars, the big controversy revolved around Emilia Perez. The most benevolent critics argue that the film deals with the acceptance of one’s own identity, as Karla Sofía Gascón’s character undergoes gender affirmation surgery while leaving behind her life of crime to become a role model. However, this approach is opportunistic: although the subject matter is well regarded today, the film has no real interest in exploring it. At the same time, it treats drug trafficking and missing persons without depth or sensitivity and reduces them to mere stereotypes.
We will not dwell on the old racist tweets of the protagonist because they have already been criticized and everything that could be said has been said. Instead, we will turn our gaze to the French director responsible for this uproar: Jacques Audiard. Because, as the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky used to say, the director is responsible for everything that happens in the film, from the actors’ performance to the smallest decision. To understand Audiard, let’s remember the interview that went viral, where he declared: “Spanish is a language of emerging, modest countries; of poor people and migrants”. He later apologized, but his words made his vision of the world clear. This explains why he made a film in “Spanish” that, ironically, requires subtitles for Spanish speakers to understand. Rather than taking place in Mexico, it seems to take place in an imaginary city where a strange dialect is spoken. It might have been better to assume this peculiarity and set the film somewhere near Gotham City or in the vicinity of Aquilea, the fictional city that Borges and Bioy Casares created for Hugo Santiago’s film Invasión.
Political correctness has taken a leading role in the awards in recent years, and many of the decisions seem to be motivated by well-liked speeches rather than by elevating cinematographic quality. Emilia Perez is the perfect example of this trend. This is the problem of misunderstood political correctness: instead of enriching the narrative or generating a genuine impact, it turns issues into a marketable item made to gain approval. Featuring diversity seems more like a strategy than a real concern for stories and characters, and the result is simply bizarre.
Edward Berger’s Conclave commits the same sin. It tries again and again to show the progressive side of the Church, forcing the end with the election of a Latin American intersex pope, whose appointment comes after a long motivational speech aligned with this superficial vision. Admittedly, at least Carlos Diehz, the actor who plays him, is Mexican, so he has no problems when it comes to expressing himself, and it is appreciated that his spoken language is clear and understandable.
Finally, and beyond the dubious ethics and questionable values of those who brought Emilia Perez forward, it is a musical where the music not only contributes nothing, but is simply dreadful. The most infamous robbery of the night was crowning El mal as best song over artists like Abraham Alexander and Adrian Quesada (with Like a Bird, from Sing Sing), Diane Warren (for The Journey, from The Six Triple Eight) and Elton John along with Brandi Carlile, Andrew Watt and Bernie Taupin (for Never Too Late).
Independent Films Still Tell Stories from Experience
Let’s take a look at the independent film Anora, directed by Sean Baker, which won no less than best original screenplay, best direction, best editing and best film. Its young leading role, Mikey Madison, also won best actress. My favorite was Demi Moore and her performance in The Substance, but Mikey did a great job. She took her preparation seriously: Sean Baker sent her Blu-rays with sexploitation films, she took pole dancing lessons, went to nightclubs with her friends and consulted with night workers. That gives an indication of the seriousness of her work, in addition to her talent that is on display.
Like Hitchcock, where the fear of prison runs through his filmography like a persistent shadow –we can see it in The 39 Steps (1935), Young and Innocent (1937), Stage Fright (1950), I Confess (1953), and North by Northwest (1959) among others– Sean Baker also builds his universe from an obsession: exclusion. It is not fugitives who flee in his films, but people trapped in a reality that marginalizes them. His characters do not have to prove their innocence, but they do have to prove their humanity within a system that pushes them to the margins. Tangerine (2015) and The Florida Project (2017) confront precarity head-on without condescension, with a raw energy and a mise-en-scène that mixes naturalism and stylization. It is a great example of how a director’s personal obsessions can permeate his work.
The criticism against Anora attacks on two fronts: first, prostitution is romanticized. It is true that Ani’s clients generally treat her well, and that her boss is more ridiculous than frightening. I think the film does not seek to be crude, but neither does it show the life of a sex worker as something aspirational or liberating. It is only a way to survive. The second focus is that the film is not on the side of minorities and that its stance is feigned. I choose to believe it is not. I choose to believe that Baker is interested in marginality. I choose to believe for one reason: the film is about superficiality and disconnection between people, about a woman who works as a prostitute out of a need for survival, and whose identity is tied to success, understood as economic triumph. This is not alien to Hollywood; deep down, it is its own substance. These are themes that resonate in its culture, in its mythology. The promise of redemption through money, of effort turned into social ascent, of personal sacrifice as a guarantee of a better future. It says more about the world it portrays than many would like to admit. Exclusion, precariousness and the struggle for success are not accessories; they are the very fabric of the story. The difference between Anora and Emilia Perez is that one is seriously a quest and the other is a manual of political correctness.
Political Correctness as a Subtle form of Censorship
Political correctness changes with the times. What was politically correct yesterday is not today. Žižek, the Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst and cultural critic, argues that political correctness is the most dangerous form of totalitarianism because instead of imposing direct orders, it exerts a more subtle and oppressive control. He explains this with an analogy: there are two types of parents, an authoritarian one who orders his son to visit his grandmother, and a “postmodern” one who tells him that he is not obliged, but that he should want to. This second case, according to the author, generates a stronger pressure because it not only imposes the action, but also how he should feel about it. He extends this idea to modern totalitarianism, where rules are not presented as impositions, but as choices that “supposedly” reflect our true desires. For Žižek, political correctness does not eliminate racism, but hides it under a cold and distant respect making bonds between people impossible. Here we can refer to Anora in the lack of empathy, bonds and relationships.
Art has to be a space for exploration, even discomfort. It is not about being offensive or provocative for the sake of it, but to understand that stories do not exist in a moral vacuum, and that forcing them to fit into pre-designed discourses is a more subtle -but no less effective- form of censorship. Cinema can still observe without condescension, portray without softening and, above all, tell without asking for permission, and this is true for Latin American cinema.
Narrating Latin America from the Inside
To speak of Latin America, we Latin Americans have first-rate films whose major problems lie in external forces that monopolize the market, financially stifle local productions and encourage the idea that success only exists on their terms. Streaming platforms, Hollywood majors and international funds that impose their own rules, where the history of our countries is, at most, an aesthetic for export. What sells abroad is produced, not what resonates inside. The regional audiovisual industry is trapped in a paradox: in order to exist, it needs financing, and the funds come with conditions that deform its identity. These external forces do not need to prohibit or censor our cinema, they have this more subtle method.
Internal forces are even more perverse because they operate disguised as bureaucracy. For example, in Argentina, the Film Law exists, but its enforcement depends on political will. If the State makes the INCAA not work, it is not a mistake; it is a decision. Payments are delayed, files are blocked, crises are invented to justify reductions in budgets. Audiovisual production becomes a battleground where independent cinema survives through stubbornness, while commercial cinema tries to adapt or die. And in the process, the public –unknowingly– loses diversity, voices and stories that never see the light of day. Because exclusion and precariousness are not subjects of external observation, they are part of our history, of our daily lives, of our cinema.
Hollywood, in its never-ending game of mirrors, insists on portraying itself as a reflection of the world, but rarely dares to look it in the face. Meanwhile, Latin American cinema has been doing this for decades, without the need to legitimize itself at a gala, without the urgency of correction, without the weight of an imposed discourse. What for them is a discovery, for us it is a memory. What for them is exploration, for us it is experience. So perhaps we should ask ourselves what kind of stories we want to continue to tell.
What Sean Baker does from the American point of view, we in Latin America have been doing for decades, because exclusion is not a theme; it is a landscape. But the difference is in the point of view: while Hollywood observes from the outside and turns precariousness into a spectacle, our cinema lives it, breathes it and returns it without filters. And therein lies the key: whether we want a cinema that disguises exclusion with gestures of prefabricated redemption or a cinema that dares to show the world as it is, with its contradictions, its fractures and its uncomfortable truths. Latin America has its own films with women’s names, such as The Passion of Berenice (1976) by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo or Camila (1984) by María Luisa Bemberg. Our cinema does not need to pretend. Because, in the end, cinema doesn’t need to be politically correct. It has to be honest.