From sepia filters to ‘Emilia Pérez’

the silent violence of Mexican representation in film

“I would only do it — and I’m not pitching something, I’m just inspiring ideas – if […] we have a Mexican comparsa come out and make it a beautiful homage to Mexico.”

-Zoe Saldaña about performing Emilia Pérez songs at the Academy Awards

Mexico’s independent cinema scene has been producing some of the most quietly affecting films I’ve seen in the last few years. From Natalia Beristáin’s Noise to Lila Avilés’s The Chambermaid, while the Hollywood tendency has gone towards big-studio regurgitated IP, the Mexican (and Latin American) industry has been betting on original voices with important things to say. It’s perhaps the effect of living in a country that has begun to take stock of the traumatic and painful events of the last few decades, people are feeling ready to talk about it. About class and gender, about danger and beauty, with all the nuance of people that have lived through it.

Noise (2022)

Mexicans don’t need Hollywood to represent them, they’ve long been telling their own stories. So it’s a problem when films that do attempt to represent them then act as though it’s a favour to have done it, how “any representation is better than none”. We’re way past that, we shouldn’t want representation for representation’s sake. That’s always done more harm than good. We want representation that is well-made, sensitive, or at the very least adds something interesting to the conversation. In fewer words: we don’t want films like Emilia Pérez, they can take their excuses for an “homage” back. We’ve got it.

A Brief History of Mexico in International Films: the harms of bad representation

Welcome to a world of sombreros, moustaches, kidnappers and the ever-present sepia filter.

When I say Mexico doesn’t struggle with simply “being represented” in Hollywood films, I mean it. It’s been there since the early twentieth century. These representations have always been deeply political and initially used the figure of the Latino to ridicule a race that was seen as adversary to the expansion of “American Power.”

Often, actors in brown-face would play reprobates, rapists and criminals. Sound familiar? It’s almost as if this discourse is used today to describe Mexican immigrants — like bad representation is more harmful than no representation.

“In most silent films, Latino characters, mainly Mexican or Mexican American characters, were often portrayed as "lazy," "untrustworthy," or "aggressive" bandits or passionate, overly sexualized "Latin lovers." These characters were relegated to supporting roles and were rarely substantive. This tactic was another way to "other" Latino characters compared to their white counterparts and further established the concept of the white savior.”

-Allison Michelle Morris, A History of Hispanic & Latinx Representation in Cinema

During the 1920s, the portrayal of Mexicans in US cinema was so bad that Mexican president Álvaro Obregón banned Hollywood films from being shown in Mexico, forcing producers to agree to stop the representations being so actively and clearly harmful.

Things got a little better for a while after that, more latin actors starting not only getting roles, but roles serious enough to be awarded Oscars, with Mexican Anthony Quinn winning for Viva Zapata in 1953. And it seemed as though representations were trying to be a little less offensive, at least (although it wasn’t great, Lupe Ontiveros famously stated that in her 35 year career she played 150 maids… of course).

The one that started the sepia filter, Traffic (2000)

Now that we’ve established how Mexicans and latinos are seen in international media, let’s talk about the place itself. In 2000, director Steven Soderbergh made Traffic, and a new long-standing tradition was born: the sepia filter (otherwise known as the Mexican filter). Initially, it was seen as a way to represent “hot weather”, but let’s not be naive.

While colour correcting isn’t inherently racist, and I don’t believe Soderbergh’s intentions were anything other than differentiating narratives (considering the deep filters that stylise Traffic in every scene), the sepia filter has since been used to depict a certain type of environment. If you think of a blue filter, you think of cool-collected-civilised. Sepia filters, on the other hand, create a mental connection to older film, denoting a “vintage” place with less technology, a place that is less civilised, less rich, simply lesser. The clear connotation is a country that needs help from the white heroes of Hollywood. And isn’t it so nice of them to show our troubles? Viva la representation!

Mexico as depicted in Breaking Bad and Saw X (2023)

“More importantly, besides connoting warm weather, this oversaturated filter added a sort of grit and even dangerous or unhealthy subtext. People began showing low-income countries and violent places with this yellow filter. In addition, the high-contrast filter makes darker skin tones lose some of their features, blending them in with their background while making lighter skin tones stand out. This is especially problematic if the film puts main characters, with lighter skin tones, in locations filled with people of color since the yellow filter helps depict them as white saviors or heroes.”
-Antonella Ponce, The 'Mexican' Movie Filter Is Worse Than We Thought

There is a historical political othering of Mexicans and Latin Americans through representation in international films. It creates a perception that their problems would be solved if they were simply more intelligent, if they weren’t only good for crime and laundry, if they opened their eyes and saw beyond the sepia at white civilisation.

The result of trivialising the identity and problems of a country? We’re seeing it in the discourse being led by the US president. It’s not “just a film”, these perceptions reflect back into real life in a never-ending, deeply harmful cycle. Bad representations are worse than no representation.

The Emilia Pérez problem

Coming-of-age in Mexico during Felipe Calderón’s term as president was collectively traumatic. We’re a generation of adults that instinctively know the difference between a firework and a gunshot, that checks the back seat of our car compulsively, that learned to put our windows up at traffic lights “just in case” someone ran at us with a knife, that saves their parents’ and loved ones’ numbers with code names on our phones. We grew up in an era of almost unprecedented violence and crime. Within the six years of his government, 121,683 violent deaths were recorded. That’s roughly 55 deaths every day.

You can imagine what that does to the conscience of a country. Since then, despite the active violence in the streets lowering, the Mexican Drug War declared by Calderón is ongoing. Disappearances are one of the biggest problems in the country and the mothers of disappeared people are some of the most vulnerable in society. As of last August, 116,386 people are “disappeared”, 10 women are killed in gender-based violence every day, and thousands of women are part of the “Madres Buscadoras” groups (mothers looking for their children), many going out weekly to mass graves in hopes of finding their loved ones.

As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, Mexican filmmakers have been creating stories that not only depict the horrors of this time, but the hope within human connections and beauty in a culture like Mexico’s. When you live through something, or when you do extensive research on it, nuance, depth and truth shine through.

This context is to demystify the idea that the newest representation of Mexico in international film, Emilia Pérez, is dealing with “fiction”. The daily lives of marginalised Mexicans are not a narrative device. A country’s ongoing internal war is not a playful twist on a musical. So, let’s dive in.

I’m used to seeing bad representation of Mexico in film (see: above), but I had hoped that not every single bad trope would still be used. All at once. Colour me shocked when a film that, at the time I watched it, had done so well at Cannes was so overtly racist. Not only that, people didn’t seem to care. A lot of critics were talking about the admittedly bad plot and writing, but none of them were discussing the lack of sensitivity. Is the bad representation of Mexico so ingrained that non-Mexicans can no longer spot it as racism? Apparently.

Emilia Pérez, a film set entirely in Mexico (aside from two or three shots meant to be somewhere else), was shot in France. That’s not necessarily an issue, although it would be better to give back to the country you’re using as your narrative device by hiring Mexican crews and sets. But according to director Jaques Audiard, ”I went two to four times to Mexico, to do casting and for location scouting. And it was when we were coming to the end of these location-scouting sessions that I realized that Mexican reality was weighing the film down. It was preventing the film from taking off. And I was not finding myself able to create the images that were coming to me in that reality.”

In case you haven’t watched it, 13-time Oscar nominated Emilia Pérez follows the story of a struggling Mexican lawyer (oh, sorry, she might be from the Dominican Republic, the accents weren’t important) who is recruited by Manitas, a drug lord searching for a sex change operation. It’s not really explained why they needed a lawyer to sort this out but like a lot of things in this film, there’s not really a logical answer. After scouting the world, she finds an Israeli surgeon (I know) to help and Manitas becomes Emilia Pérez, who sends her now ex-wife and children to a safe place until she can return as Manitas’s sister and take care of them.

What ensues is one of the most offensive plots I’ve ever had the displeasure of having to sit through. A musical leathered with bad Spanish about the redemption arc of a drug lord who, after murdering and disappearing thousands of people, finds a conscience as a woman (because duh, women are sensitive — if you want to read more about the bad representation of trans issues in the film, I highly recommend this review), and starts a charity to help find victims of violence. She gets help from drug lords in prison because they all “regret” the violence and starts sleeping with the wife of one of the disappeared men (who used to hit her so it’s all good, we’re glad he’s dead — a lot of these victims don’t actually matter).

The two most offensive songs? One where the mothers of disappeared people (again, one of the most marginalised groups in Mexico) sing alongside the drug lords that caused these disappearances about helping each other out. Think about the real victims of violence in Mexico, then go back and re-read that sentence. And one where Emilia is singing about being half-woman and half-man soon after her daughter tells her she smells like her father used to: guacamole, mezcal and spicy food. Seriously.

Karla Sofía Gascón as Manitas

Much like in the 20th century, when white actors were hired to portray main Mexican roles to make them stand out from real latinos, Emilia Pérez does a similar thing with its titular character. Karla Sofía Gascón, the actress that portrays Manitas and Emilia Pérez, is white and Spanish. When portraying drug lord Manitas, she’s in brown face: the evil Mexican stereotype back to haunt us. This is the man that makes people disappear, that murders for a living and feeds on a violent country, and he is undeniably brown. When portraying Emilia, the reformed and redeemed charity saviour, she’s white.

Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia Pérez

It’s subtle, given the film’s main character is a black woman (Zoe Saldaña). I don’t even believe Jaques Audiard did it intentionally, his film is clearly the product of a lack of care for the people it represents, and these are the consequences.

When asked about research, Audiard’s main answer is a pride in his lack of Spanish-speaking. He talks about how that gave him freedom in the rhythm of speech as he’s not tied to language. But when you’re dealing with a language that is used to convey the level of hurt caused by the very thing you’re representing, it’s not freedom, it’s laziness and a clear refusal to engage with the problems of your characters.

The result is, therefore, not a free opera, it’s a bad script with misunderstood depictions and stereotypes used to further violence against Mexicans. It’s re-victimising and actively taking voices away from victims that exist beyond the periphery of Audiard’s ambitions.

“We are still immersed in the violence in some areas. You are taking one of the most difficult topics in the country, but it's not only any film, it's an opera. It's a musical. So for us and many activists, it's like you are playing with one of the biggest wars in the country since the Revolution [in the early 20th Century]. Part of the plot is about searching mothers of the disappeared [searching for their children]: one of the most vulnerable groups in Mexico. And there were zero words in the four Golden Globe acceptance speeches to the victims.”

-Héctor Guillen, ‘You're playing with one of our biggest wars': Why some Mexican people are upset about Oscars frontrunner Emilia Pérez

Good art is about true voice

Emilia Pérez fans defend it on two things: that it’s different to anything that has been made before and that it’s fiction, therefore cannot be taken at face value. The first one is easy: different doesn’t mean good or necessary. Sure, a narconovela (a TV genre that tells a melodramatic story around the culture of drug dealers in Latin America) had never been a musical — that doesn’t mean it should have been. Sure, an opera had never been about drug dealing — that doesn’t mean we need one. Different is not an implicit trait of good art, it’s not even a sign of good art.

The second one is a little more complex. It is a fundamental fact that fiction has no obligation to represent truth in the literal sense of the word. So how do you convince people that just because something is fiction it doesn’t remove the need for truth in a broader sense? It’s not about the depiction of literal truths, but about the reflection of experiencing the systems that are depicted. Emilia Pérez does neither.

There cannot be any truth in a film that hinges entirely on a topic that hasn’t been researched at all, that was written with a French man’s initial perceptions of Mexican life and pain before having been to Mexico.

Needless to say when Karla Sofía Gascón said, “I think this movie is more Mexican than what many Mexicans make,” she perhaps didn’t realise the impossibility of the statement. I’m not particularly surprised given her classist rampage on X about lower class Mexicans clearly not understanding what the film was about and calling detractors of the film “too stupid”. But I digress, Mexicans can make better Mexican films because they understand the truth of experience. Could a non-Mexican achieve that understanding? Of course! If they care enough to research and talk to the people they want to represent.

Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez made a good point on what I mean by “a broader sense of truth” when speaking about acting in Emilia Pérez (which he later had to retract due to hoards of Selena Gomez fans attacking him). Essentially, he said it’d be hard for Selena Gomez (who plays Manitas’s wife) to interpret the character since she doesn’t speak Spanish, having learned the lines phonetically, it’s very difficult to convey the truth in feeling. Fundamentally, you don’t know exactly what you’re saying or why you’re saying the words with certain inflictions, so how can you be truthful in your portrayal? It’s a good point. Again, it’s not about literal truth, it’s about the reflection of experience — an experience you can’t have if you don’t understand the language you’re speaking.

The same can be said about the songwriting and the process of creating a film in a language and a culture you don’t understand. It’s not just about incorrect translations, clunky dialogue or not understanding an actress’s accent, it’s about the lack of honesty behind the making of a film that is dealing with a real trauma. As established, fiction cannot be absolved of responsibility because it’s fiction.

And finally, some have said that Mexicans are angry about Emilia Pérez because it’s showing a reality they don’t want to look at. I don’t know how to delicately explain that they live in that reality. They don’t need a white, European man to show it to them or decide how it will be shown. When international media reports on problems in Mexico, the first people to share it are Mexicans. I promise you, we want the world to listen. We just want it to be our voice that’s listened to. What this argument does is drown the voices of Mexicans further.

Ever since international studios set their sights on Mexico, good representations have been few and far between. Most of the time, Mexico is the backdrop, the set piece, the “we all know how bad it is down there”. Emilia Pérez has, perhaps, been the most offensive representation in a few decades, but Mexicans were put in a boiling pot of water that was ready to burst, so it did. When you hear them tell you they’re annoyed, listen to them. When they tell you these representations have been trivialising the real issues, do better. Mexicans are angry, constantly, it also makes them pretty cool filmmakers, the world just has to be willing to listen.

What to watch instead of Emilia Pérez

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of some amazing Mexican films that have come out over the last few years that depict socially complex problems honestly and truthfully.

• Roma, dir. Alfonso Cuarón

• Noise, dir. Natalia Beristáin

• The Chambermaid, dir. Lila Áviles

• Güeros, dir. Alonso Ruizpalacios

• Hurricane Season, dir. Elisa Miller

• Las Niñas Bien, dir. Alejandra Márquez Abella

• Totem, dir. Lila Áviles

Feel free to leave more recommendations in the comments on this post for people to shift through if you feel inclined.

If you’ve made it this far down, thank you for listening to a Mexican voice, now go listen to more.