Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Song (x2), Best International Feature, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Film Editing 
Overworked, underpaid, underappreciated Mexico City lawyer Rita (Zoe Saldaña) gets an offer she can't refuse from a cartel leader looking to make a change. In exchange for several million untraceable dollars, Rita researches and compares doctors worldwide to find a reassignment specialist and helps her client fake an appropriate death. Years later, Rita is approached once more by the new and improved Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofia Gascón) who feels the heat has died down significantly enough to renew her relationship with her former wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and children.
Let me begin by saying that when I watched this I was unaware of the controversy surrounding it. My first impression is that it was entertaining but had some significant flaws. The plot meanders and could do with some tighter editing, and the songs (oh, it is a full-blown musical, by the way) are okay but lacked pizzazz. I think contemporary musicals are like this. You either embrace the OTT nature and lean in or you might as well just film a straight drama. Saldaña is the star of this film and she should have been nominated for Best Actress, not Supporting. No shade to Gascón, but Saldaña literally dances away with the movie.
So the main controversy is that this is a French film set in Mexico but filmed in Paris with no Mexican leads and the director admitted he did zero research and was plainly uninterested in any sort of nuance surrounding narcocultura, modern Mexico, or even transitioning. And it shows. This is very trope-y, generic, clichéd window dressing for a story that could have been set anywhere. This could have been a Breaking Bad episode. Audiard told reporters that he wanted to see if he as a 70-year-old white cis heterosexual man could make a film about transitioning without getting cancelled. Is that a good enough reason? Probably not. But it happened anyway. And Netflix has thrown a fuckton of money into campaigning for this Oscar season.
As a piece of streaming entertainment, I thought it was fine. If it were not nominated for 13 Oscars, it would probably just disappear into obscurity as a pandering, stereotypical cash grab. But it is nominated, so now the question becomes is this outrage going to propel this film into being awarded Best Picture?
It's currently streaming on Netflix.
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