Oscar Noms Analysis: Why ‘Emilia Pérez’ Dominated and Will Be Hard to Beat

The Hollywood Reporter’s executive editor of awards dissects Thursday morning’s announcement.

‘Emilia Pérez’ NETFLIX

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In case anyone needed a reminder that “Film Twitter” and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are not populated by the same people, Emilia Pérez, the polarizing French-directed, Spanish-language musical about a trans Mexican gangster, landed a field-leading 13 Oscar nominations on Thursday morning. That tally — encompassing noms for best picture, director, actress, supporting actress, adapted screenplay, international feature, cinematography, film editing, makeup/hairstyling, original score, sound and two for original song — smashed the record for a non-English-language film (previously held by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Roma, which had 10 each) and is just one shy of the all-time record for any film (All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land each landed 14).

Is Jacques Audiard’s Netflix film unbeatable? Of course not. Plenty of people have issues with the film, including many members of the Mexican and trans communities, who find it offensive, and critics and general audiences, who find it artistically lacking (and have given it Rotten Tomatoes scores of 76 percent and 33 percent, respectively).

Plus, strong arguments can be made for the prospects of five of its nine fellow best picture nominees. Ten noms were allocated for A24’s Venice-winning VistaVision epic The Brutalist (including a co-field-leading three for acting) and Universal’s blockbuster musical Wicked (though 1932’s Grand Hotel is the only film that ever won best picture without directing or screenplay noms). Close behind, with eight each, are Searchlight’s Bob Dylan portrait A Complete Unknown (bolstered by far-from-assured noms for director James Mangold and supporting actress Monica Barbaro, one of its three acting noms) and Focus’ Conclave (despite a rough miss for director Edward Berger). And then there’s Neon’s Cannes winner Anora with six (including four for Sean Baker personally).

And besides, the film with the most noms of its year often does not go on to win. In fact, of the films that previously garnered 14 noms (see above) or 13 (the others being Gone With the Wind, From Here to Eternity, Mary Poppins, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Forrest Gump, Shakespeare in Love, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Chicago, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Shape of Water and Oppenheimer), five lost best picture (La La Land, Mary Poppins, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

But — and this is a notable but — four of those five lost in the era beween 1945 and 2009, when there were only five best picture nominees and the category’s winner was chosen by a popular vote, as opposed to the preferential, or ranked, ballot that was employed prior to and since that period. And in the current era of the preferential ballot, big, bold, not-for-everyone swings (e.g. The Shape of Water and Everything Everywhere All at Once) have been rewarded just as often as more conservative approaches (e.g. Green Book and CODA).

In other words, eight years after Amazon’s Manchester by the Sea became the first film distributed by a streaming service to be nominated for best picture, three years after Apple’s CODA became the first to win, and on the heels of nine prior Netflix best picture nominees that came up short, there is considerable reason to suspect that the world’s highest-profile streaming service may finally have a winner on its hands.

The Academy’s embrace of Emilia Pérez is significant not just in and of itself, but also as a reflection of the increasing internationalization of the Academy. In response to the #OscarsSoWhite uproar a decade ago, the Academy recruited not just more people of color and women, but also more people based outside of America, for whom subtitles are not a deterrent. That paved the way for the historic best picture win five years ago of Parasite, as well as best picture noms for Roma, Minari, Drive My Car, All Quiet on the Western Front, Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives and The Zone of Interest.

This year, it manifested itself not only in the Emilia Pérez noms, but also in strong showings for Sony Classics’ Portuguese-language I’m Still Here (nominated for best picture, best actress for Fernanda Torres and best international feature for Brazil) and Sideshow/Janus’ dialogue-free Flow (nominated for best animated feature and best international feature), and in the best documentary feature category, in which — surprise — four of the five nominees are entirely in a language other than English and the fifth is partially. (It’s certainly possible that this year’s nominations were impacted, to a degree, by the wildfire crisis that has been plaguing the Los Angeles area for weeks. Sixty percent of Academy members are based in SoCal, and many of them have had more pressing concerns on their mind than Oscar voting.)

Beyond best picture, there are plenty of other competitive categories this year. Best director, for the first time in 27 years, pits against each other five people who have never previously been nominated for that award, including veterans Audiard, Baker and Mangold, as well as relative newbies Brady Corbet and Coralie Fargeat. (It’s the same lineup as the DGA Awards, apart from Fargeat bouncing Berger.) Corbet won the Golden Globe and probably has the most compelling narrative — the 36-year-old made his film for less than $10 million — but, not least because of the recent AI brouhaha surrounding the film, this prize remains up for grabs.

Best actor is also looking like a dead heat. The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody, who 22 years ago became and remains the category’s youngest-ever winner (he was 29 when he won for The Pianist), and then largely disappeared, is enjoying a comeback story for the ages, having already won the best drama actor Golden Globe. A Complete Unknown’s Timothée Chalamet, who will be the host and music guest on Saturday Night Live this weekend, is arguably the last true movie star, and he would beat Brody’s record by a few days (and would also join Cate Blanchett in an elite club of people who won an Oscar for playing an Oscar winner). Conclave’s Ralph Fiennes, 62, is among the most revered living actors who have never won an Oscar. And Sing Sing’s Colman Domingo — a nominee last year for Rustin who today became first person to earn best actor Oscar noms in back-to-back years since Denzel Washington did so for Fences in 2017 and Roman J. Israel, Esq. in 2018 — is about as well-liked as anyone in the business. Nobody should be predicting this award with any real confidence.

(The fifth slot went to Sebastian Stan for his ballsy portrayal of Donald Trump in The Apprentice; I’m so pleased for his inclusion, if also sorry for Daniel Craig, who came up short for some of his finest work, in Queer.)

No category has been more competitive this year than best actress. At the end of the day, room could not be found for even Marianne Jean-Baptiste, a past Oscar nominee who swept the major critics awards for her searing turn in Hard Truths, or Angelina Jolie, a past Oscar winner and the A-lister of A-listers, who seemed an early front-runner for the biopic Maria.

Instead, the Academy nominated the leading ladies of five best picture-nominated films. Anora’s Mikey Madison is the ingenue (just 25, she’d be the category’s ninth-youngest winner ever). Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón is the trailblazer (the first trans person ever nominated for an acting Oscar). Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo is just an Oscar shy of an EGOT. And I’m Still Here’s Fernanda Torres, who won the best drama actress Golden Globe, has a loyal following. But I suspect that the showy performance and remarkable personal narrative of The Substance’s Demi Moore will be too much for Oscar voters to resist, as it was for those who awarded her the best musical/comedy actress Golden Globe.

The supporting actor categories look a little more settled. I wouldn’t totally count out A Complete Unknown’s Edward Norton or Anora’s Yura Borisov, but A Real Pain’s Kieran Culkin, already a Golden Globe winner and a master at endearing acceptance speeches, is still the supporting actor to beat, even if his film came up short for a best picture nom. And though Wicked’s Ariana Grande makes a tremendous impression in her first major film role and veteran Isabella Rossellini is Hollywood royalty who makes the most of every minute of her limited screen time in Conclave, Emilia Pérez’s Zoe Saldaña is the supporting actress front-runner, even more so than she would have been if her co-star Selena Gomez had been nominated alongside her in the category.

Best international feature, for the first time ever, includes multiple films that were also nominated for best picture, Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here, and one of them will surely prevail. Best documentary feature is populated with five films that most Oscar voters outside of the Academy’s doc branch haven’t seen and won’t be especially enthused to check out, so my hunch is that the winner will be one of the fine films that would also represent a social statement about the conflict in the Middle East (No Other Land) or in Ukraine (Porcelain War). And best animated feature includes two films that also received noms outside of the category, Flow and The Wild Robot, which is certainly encouraging for their prospects, but they’re also up against 2024’s highest-grossing film, Disney’s Inside Out 2, which cannot be counted out.

As for the music categories? Best original score includes two out-and-out musicals, Emilia Pérez and Wicked; two dramas with memorably booming compositions, The Brutalist and Conclave (for the latter, Volker Bertelmann could win the category for the second time in three years); plus The Wild Robot (though only one animated film has won this award this century). Any one of them could prevail. Best original song, meanwhile includes two Emilia Pérez tunes, Golden Globe winner “El Mal” and “Mi Camino,” which could result in them canceling out each other and neither winning, although that did not happen in either of the two most recent instances in which a single film had multiple song noms, La La Land and Barbie. If they do split, the beneficiary could be two-time past winner Elton John (and Brandi Carlile) for “Never Too Late” from the Disney doc Elton John: Never Too Late — or, at long last, Diane Warren, the most nominated songwriter who has never won, for her 16th nom, “The Journey” from Netflix’s The Six Triple Eight.

There are 38 days between now and the 97th Academy Awards on March 2. The final round of Oscars voting will run 9 a.m. PT on Feb. 11 through 5 p.m. PT on Feb. 18. A lot can still happen.