Heroes to villains

With 13 Oscar nominations, Emilia Pérez's cast and crew should have been flying high. Then came a social media scandal and a fearsome backlash

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You can generally tell when awards season is going well for a movie because its stars are everywhere, attending galas, treading red carpets, doing as many interviews as they can, and repeating the same bland sentiments about how special this movie is and everyone was a dream to work with.

Conversely, you can tell things aren't so rosy when your lead star is cancelling all their US appearances, being discreetly airbrushed out of the campaign and issuing statements such as: "I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain."

This is where Emilia Pérez and its lead, Karla Sofía Gascón, find themselves. Three weeks ago the movie was riding high, with a remarkable 13 Oscar nominations, including best actress for Gascón - the most for any movie this year and one short of the all-time record. Now, though, it is looking as if the wheels have come off for Emilia Pérez's awards campaign, or at least for Gascón herself. Many are wondering how this could have happened so quickly; was it a spectacular act of self-sabotage, or are there darker arts at work?

At least part of this debacle has been self-inflicted. When Gascón won joint best actress at Cannes last May, the first transgender performer to have done so, she tearfully dedicated the award to all trans people "who suffer" and anticipated the online hate that was sure to follow: "Tomorrow, there will be plenty of comments from terrible people saying the same things about all of us trans people," she said.

"But I want to end with a message of hope... We all have the opportunity to change for the better, to become better people."