Emilia Peréz/Will & Harper | 2024
Karla Sofía Gascón in Jacques Audíard’s Emilia Pérez. Courtesy of Netflix.
It isn’t easy being transgender. For those of us who live in America, it’s about to get even harder. With the recent election of Donald Trump and the rush by Democrats to blame trans people for their loss (despite running away from our issues at every turn), the future can seem somewhat bleak. It is of some comfort, then, that our stories are still being told. But as shown by two recent Netflix releases, we’re both making strides, and taking steps back. Together they represent two opposite sides of the coin of trans representation and how our stories are told. And while neither film holds a candle to Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow or Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker, I think it’s worth exploring why these two disparate films say something about the current state of transness in cinema.
An infamous drug kingpin (Karla Sofía Gascón) decides to transition, using her gender reassignment surgery to stage her own death and start a new life in Jacques Audiard's Cannes Film Festival hit, Emilia Pérez. Zoe Saldaña also stars as her lawyer, who after aiding with her disappearance, helps bring her wife (Selena Gomez) and children back to Mexico, with the radically changed Emilia now posing as their aunt - because to reveal her secret is to put herself and her entire family in danger.
Emilia Pérez was met with rapturous reviews out of Cannes, its unusual musical style wowing audiences before being picked up by Netflix in the United States. Yet despite its popularity, it might be one of the most deeply misguided films about transness I've ever seen. The film is universally well acted, and it's certainly unusual to see a film like this have such crossover appeal with cishet audiences, the film is fault from the bottom up. It's a mind boggling litany of awful choices. Every scene is a brand new instance of "what were they thinking?"
Its protagonist's transition is seen as duplicitous and dishonest, an act of manipulation through which she continues her selfish attempts to control those that she abandoned. Not only is her transition portrayed as more of a disguise to evade the authorities, it's an act of continued selfishness that ends up destroying not only her own life, but the lives of those she loves. While I'm not particularly interested in the respectability politics of trans representation, Emilia Pérez seems to brazenly uphold anti-trans rhetoric even while claiming to support us. It's an ugly, messy film, populated by painfully written musical numbers and increasingly bizarre directorial choices that seem wholly uninterested in treating Emilia as a whole person. In a year of such terrific trans stories being told in film, the less time spent thinking about Emilia Pérez the better.
Will Ferrell and Harper Steele in Josh Greenbaum’s Will & Harper. Courtesy of Netflix.
On the other side of the spectrum, worlds away from Emilia Pérez, is Josh Greenbaum’s Will & Harper.When one of his best friends comes out as transgender, actor and comedian Will Ferrell sets off on a road trip across the country with her to visit places she loved before transitioning, and to reconnect with his old friend to try and understand what it means to be trans in America.
I had some trepidations going into this one, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Ferrell, obviously the bigger name here, doesn't try to center himself in Harper's narrative. He genuinely feels like he's here to listen and to learn, not pat himself on the back for being a good ally. Along the way the pair reminisce about their glory days at Saturday Night Live, explore grungy dive bars and sketchy roadhouses, and ask tough questions that lead Harper to sometimes painful memories that both shock and move Will - never knowing or understanding what Harper had been going through behind closed doors for years.
The result is an altogether charming documentary, a road movie and buddy comedy rolled into one that isn’t afraid to stumble, make mistakes, and be imperfect. It's constant wondering, searching, probing - sometimes finding answers and other times simply more questions. Its clearly aimed more at a cisgender audience than a transgender one, but I appreciated that Will admits it's a subject that he knows little about, and then moves heaven and earth to try to learn for his friend's sake. I think these questions don't often hit people until it's someone they know; and I see the problems with that, but I also see this approach as something worthwhile - when political rhetoric gets so heated, sometimes actually meeting the people being targeted can change everything.
The film isn't all "why can't we all just get along" platitudes either - it recognizes that bigotry and hate exist and that some people aren't going to change. But it doesn't dwell on them. It just wants to put transness into a demystified context that cis people can easily understand. So here's to the imperfect allies who may not always get it but have hearts full of love anyway. The ones who may not always get it right but keep right on trying anyway. May all of us be so lucky as to have a friend like Will Ferrell. It's a lovely film.
