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A Deadline FYC screening event at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Linwood Dunn Theatre in Hollywood this week brought together Emilia Pérez director-screenwriter Jacques Audiard, stars Zoe Saldaña and Adriana Paz and artisans representing several of the film’s near-record 13 Oscar nominations and many other awards the film has won or been nominated for since debuting at the Cannes Film Festival in May, when it took Best Actress for its four female leads and a Jury Prize as well.
In addition to Audiard, Saldaña and Paz, Joining me were composers Camille and Clement Ducol, film editor Juliette Welfling, and sound supervisor and re-recording mixer Cyril Holtz.
Here’s the full conversation:
It has been a tough week for Emilia Pérez and the people who made it what it is due to the controversy surrounding Best Actress Oscar nominee Karla Sofía Gascón, the first trans performer to be nominated for an acting Academy Award, and whose shocking past tweets surfaced in the last week forcing her to cancel all her planned appearances and awards shows. This FYC event, in the works for a while, went on as a screening and conversation I moderated and, social media frenzies aside, was designed to put the focus back where it belongs: the movie itself.
After the film ended and before I started our conversation I did ask the enthusiastic crowd just how many were seeing it for the first time. 98% of hands went up, proving the real interest was cinematic and discovering just what inspired this widely acclaimed motion picture from one of the masters of the medium.
Audiard is a veteran French filmmaker of some repute but he has never before done a musical, and this one was inspired by an operetta and thus had to go all in.
“Well, the challenge was that we were setting out to do a thing that we’d never done before,” he said. “You know, generally I write, I was about to say normal films, which is kind of a bizarre way to put it. But in any case, I don’t write musicals. Musicals from the outset meant there was going to be song, there was going to be music, there was going to be dance. We were heading out into the unknown. You know, here in Hollywood you have a history of the musical. If one were to write a history of the American musical, you would have five volumes. If one were to write a history of the French musical, maybe we’d have 55 pages.”
For Saldaña, nominated for the first time for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, the role of Rita brought together every aspect of her career, but there were deeper reasons for her to do it. “It was also reconnecting with do sense memory of my experiences growing up in Latin America and finding some kind of commonality with Rita. And it turns out that we did have a lot more in common than I was able to admit,” she said. “It takes vulnerability for you to admit that, you know, Rita, had been overlooked, and she felt burned out, and I’ve felt overlooked in my life one way or another. I know what those feelings are to feel important in an environment that completely isolates you because of your gender, or your race and to feel kind of eager, you know, desperate to become something more. All of those feelings were really relatable. What I needed to do was do was to really be in her shoes.”
For veteran Mexican star Paz, doing this film in France with a French director, but set in her home country and spoken largely in Spanish, was new. And she talked about the meaning of it, and the reactions she has gotten ever since its premiere.
“Well, being in Cannes for me was an unforgettable experience. And being part of this combo with these amazing girls and doing that and most of the tours of Emilia Pérez,” she said. “I think that one of the most memorable things that I remember was in Tel Aviv, a director friend of mine, he was, like, trembling when when he just saw the movie and he told me it has been an amazing experience. And I think most of the reactions during the tour were like that, the people were so emotional about the movie. And, and they were so moved. And of course, there are people that don’t like the movie but that’s normal. I think that when you write a song or write a book or make a movie, of course there’s going to be opinions that are not the same. But I think that’s very interesting because when it’s important it can create and provoke those conversations. And I think that the conversations about the movie have been so interesting too. So I want to keep the positive things, and I have had a lot of learning since I shot the movie and working with all these amazing people.”
