In the end, Emilia Pérez went two for 13. Jacques Audiard‘s unclassifiable Mexican cartel transgender musical went into the 97th Academy Awards as the theoretical frontrunner. It’s 13 nominations — for best picture, director, actress, supporting actress, adapted screenplay, international feature, cinematography, film editing, makeup/hairstyling, original score, sound and two for original song — were the most ever for a non-English-language film, beating the 10 noms each for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Roma, and within touching distance of the all-time record held by All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land, which earned 14 each.
But when the votes were counted, Emilia Pérez walked away with just two awards: A best supporting actress nod for Zoe Saldaña and the best original song honor for “El Mal.”
We all know why. Emilia Pérez suffered the most spectacular derailing of an Oscar campaign in recent memory. There was just a week between the Jan. 23 nominations — including the historic best actress nomination for Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón as the first out trans person to receive an acting nom from the Academy — and the resurfacing of Gascón’s racist and anti-Muslim tweets, posts that sparked a backlash that turned Emilia Pérez from Oscar frontrunner to also-ran.
“Anora uses the F-word 479 times. That’s more than the record set by Karla Sofía Gascón’s publicist,” quipped Oscar host Conan O’Brien on Sunday’s telecast, acknowledging the scandal and its debilitating impact on the Emilia Pérez campaign.
Things played out very differently in France. On Friday, Feb. 28, barely 48 hours before the 97th Academy Awards, the French film academy heaped praise on Emilia Pérez, presenting it with 7 Césars, the local Oscar equivalent, including for best film, best director and best adapted screenplay. Gascón attended the César ceremony in Paris, even walking the red carpet, marking her first public appearance since the scandal erupted. (Gascón attended the Oscar ceremony but apparently skipped the red carpet). She didn’t win the César — French actress Hafsia Herzi won for best actress for her role playing a female prison guard in Stéphane Demoustier’s drama Borgo — but it was a night of triumph for Emilia Pérez.
Gascón’s resurfaced tweets and the resulting scandal also made headlines in France, but they seem to have had little impact on the Césars. This may be partly due to culture differences — the French film industry likes to pride itself on being harder to shock than its counterparts in the U.S. — but also reflects a difference in the competition.
“Of course, cancel culture plays less of a role here than it does in America, where a few tweets can get you in major trouble,” says César voter David Frenkel, a producer whose credits include Home Front (2020), a drama starring scandal-prone French star Gérard Depardieu. “But it also comes down to the choices available. Compared to the Oscars, where there was stiff competition with films like Anora, which won the Palme d’or, as well as The Brutalist, none of the movies vying for best picture in France were as acclaimed as Emilia Pérez.”
For the 50th Césars, Audiard’s musical was up against decidedly weak opposition. Best film contenders included a pair of pleasant, but lightweight dramedies — Emmanuel Courcol’s crowdpleasing The Marching Band, and Alain Guiraudie’s surreal murder mystery Miséricorde — as well as Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s The Count of Monte Cristo, a commercial blockbuster that divided critics.
Arguably Emilia Pérez‘s strongest César competition was Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story. The tale of an African refugee struggling to make ends meet in the streets of Paris, the film was in some ways the anti-Emilia Perez: A tiny low-budget drama shot on the streets of Paris and featuring a cast of mostly non-actors. Souleymane’s Story had next to no profile before its premiere in Cannes last year, where it took the jury prize and acting honors for star Abou Sangare in the Un Certain Regard section. It then proved a sleeper hit, earning close to $4 million in local release. While the film didn’t topple Emilia Pérez, Souleymane’s Story was still a big winner at the Césars, taking four trophies, including a best male revelation award for Sangare, who was only legalized in France following the release of the film.
“The success of Souleymane’s Story proves that the French can get behind a movie without any stars, and that tackles questions of immigration and racism,” says Christine Masson, co-host of the popular French public radio show about movies, On Aura Tout Vu.
Netflix, which acquired domestic rights to Emilia Pérez, made its star Gascón the center of its Oscar campaign, a strategy that backfired when the tweets scandal broke, sending the streamer scrambling to remove the actress from award events and promotional materials. In France, home of auteur culture, the focus was always going to be on the film’s director. And Audiard is one of his country’s most beloved filmmakers.
“If you look at his record, he’s been winning Césars since his first feature, See How They Fall, came out back in 1994,” says Frenkel.
Audiard’s triple win on Friday — for best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay — made him the most successful director in César history, with 13 statues over nine features. On the question of France and cancel culture, it should be noted the previous record holder, with 10 César wins, is … Roman Polanski.
When it comes to scandal and outrage, however, the French film industry has been inching closer to the U.S. In 2020, Polanski did win two Césars for his historical thriller An Office and a Spy, for best director and best adapted screenplay, but the film was accompanied by protests from feminist groups. When his name was announced at the award ceremony, actress Adèle Haenel (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) stormed out of the room, shouting “Shame! Shame!”
With Emilia Pérez, outrage over Gascón’s old social media posts never really caught fire in France. The bulk of local coverage of the scandal focused on how it could impact the Oscars, not whether it would hurt the film’s chances at the Césars. Audiard helped his case by quickly and decisively distancing himself from Gascón’s comments. The director’s reputation as a progressive force — he’s a founding member of Le Collectif 50/50, which calls for inclusion and gender parity in the French film and TV industries — likely played a role as well.
“I think people in France understood that the tweets weren’t Audiard’s fault,” says Masson. “Whereas when you’re dealing with Polanski, it’s much more difficult to separate the art from the artist, because the artist committed a crime.”
The contrast between the Oscar and César campaigns also underscores a fundamental difference: In the U.S., awards season is an industry spectacle, driven by multi-million dollar publicity campaigns. In France, even the most ambitious awards push is a decidedly provincial affair, relying more on critical consensus and a filmmaker’s reputation than on carefully managed narratives fought out in public.
There is also far less at stake. Winning an Oscar, even being in the awards conversation, can transform a career — see Anora‘s Sean Baker and Mikey Madison — and can determine a film’s commercial fate. Without its successful awards run, it’s unlikely The Brutalist, which scored three Oscars on Sunday, would have broken out or even broken even. In the end, Brady Corbet’s historic epic, made for under $10 million, earned close to $16 million at the domestic box office and more than $41 million worldwide. No César win can deliver that kind of box office bump.
“Winning a César is a nice bonus, it gives bragging rights, but it doesn’t really move the needle in terms of business,” notes one European sales agent who regularly sells into France. “Winning the Palme in Cannes, or winning the Oscar, means a lot more for French distributors than winning a César.”