A YouTube Parody of ‘Emilia Pérez’ Is Pointing Out Everything Wrong With It
What do you think of when you Google “Emilia Pérez + bad” in your brain? Most likely, it’s that viral clip of a doctor singing “from penis to vaginaaaaaaaaa” as bandage-covered plastic surgery patients float around in a heavily choreographed hospital bed dance.
Now imagine if the entire movie had been like that. That would have made it the kind of camp Mona Lisa that I was hoping Emilia Pérez would be. (It was not.) That’s also the kind of movie that a group of people decidedly not associated with Emilia Pérez have just made. However, these people are queer, and thus understand camp and did an incredible job with it.
The movie in question – a short produced by Mexican trans creative Camila Aurora and screenwriter Héctor Guillén – is called Johanne Sacreblu. And if you clocked that the title sounds like a French cliché, then you probably already suspect why Johanne Sacreblu exists. It’s a parody of Emilia Pérez, intended to satirize that Oscar-nominated film’s inaccurate, ethnocentric, and stereotype-heavy portrayal of Mexico. Since the 30-minute Johanne Sacreblu dropped on YouTube at the end of January, it’s already amassed over 3 million views.
Johanne Sacreblu centers on a trans woman poised to inherit France’s largest baguette bakery. She falls in love with Agtugo Ratatouille, the trans heir to the nation’s leading croissant bakery. Naturally, if this were a film that realistically portrayed France, then the characters would work at a fish market or as middle managers at a bank – basically anywhere average. But this is a film meant to embrace absurdity, so it features all Mexican actors wearing stereotypical French attire and occasionally speaking in a butchered version of French that is probably what Selena Gomez would have sounded like if she’d starred in Amélie. Also, inexplicable Ratatouille-looking rat plushies pop up out of nowhere. It’s all just a mirror image of what Emilia did to Mexico. Plus, it all occurs to the tune of atonal, nonsensical music, nodding to the complete dearth of catchy or even necessary songs in Emilia Pérez.
As you may know, the Internet has discovered that Emilia Pérez, in addition to be listless, joyless and gutless, is totally bereft of depth or specificity due to having been filmed in France with minimal Mexican involvement. Additionally, the director didn’t even speak or understand Spanish. In contrast, Johanne Sacreblu is entirely produced in Mexico with zero French involvement. As a cherry on top, Aurora’s trans identity makes her genuinely qualified to tell a story about a trans person. Guillén, for their part, was already targeting Emilia Pérez even before writing Johanne Sacreblu: They previously went viral with their “for your consideration”-style faux poster that dubbed Emilia Pérez “racist Eurocentrist mockery.” In this way, Johanne Sacreblu’s ridiculous-looking curlicue moustaches and Emily in Paris-sounding French-accents clearly come from a place of love – as a way to say, “Be better, France.”
Guillén has also previously emphasized the insensitivity of Emilia Pérez in addressing serious issues like Mexico’s drug war and the plight of mothers with “disappeared” children. He even noted the lack of acknowledgment for these victims during Karla Sofia Gascón’s acceptance speech on behalf of the movie at the Golden Globes. “Part of the plot is about mothers of the disappeared [searching for their children]: one of the most vulnerable groups in Mexico,” he previously told the BBC. “And there were zero words in the four Golden Globe acceptance speeches to the victims.” Now, if only someone involved with the movie could talk more about that instead of explaining yet again how they don’t know Karla Sofia Gascón and how they wish she’d stop so that they can all just win their Oscars, already.
