Oscars groupthink pushes Emilia Pérez, the weakest nominee, to a record-breaking lead

Par : Peter Bradshaw

23 janvier 2025 à 18:38

The Brutalist is the next most favoured choice, with its mesmeric drama, currently neck-and-neck with the sugary charm of Wicked

• News: Emilia Pérez breaks record with 13 as The Brutalist and Wicked both trail with 10
• Oscars nominations 2025: the full list

So the strange process of Oscar-night groupthink consensus begins, and a certain film becomes mysteriously garlanded as the obvious choice to be preferred over the others as the big winner. Jacques Audiard’s baffling, amusing, preposterous and (to some) artlessly offensive Mexican trans crime musical Emilia Pérez leads the field with 13 nominations. But for me, Emilia Pérez is pretty much the weakest movie on the best picture list, certainly not as good as, say, Nickel Boys, which doesn’t get much of the conversation.

But Emilia Pérez could be heading for the same kind of tulip-fever acclamation that greeted the phantasmagoric Everything Everywhere All at Once from 2022 which cleaned up on Oscar night. Awards season connoisseurs know how, in the world of bland streaming content, films that are different, which get Oscar voters excitedly alerting each other to their unusualness – without being too unusual – can generate their own momentum. It’s certainly a remarkable success story for Audiard, a French director in the classic mould, entirely and magnificently unaware of liberal Anglo-Hollywood squeamishness over whether or not certain stories are “his to tell”. A French auteur’s prerogative covers everything.

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