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    The Stylish Celebrities Who Ruled the Red Carpet This Awards Season: Cynthia Erivo, Timothée Chalamet and More

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    If fashion is a game, they were playing to win.The ultimate honor during awards season is to take home a statue. But the glut of ceremonies and related events between January and March has long offered celebrities another way to distinguish themselves: by their clothing choices.For A-listers, red carpets are as much a venue for self expression as they are an arena for landing brand deals, invitations to fashion weeks and the covers of not-yet-extinct print magazines. For viewers, they can offer a peek at the trends of tomorrow. And for many people, whether they are walking or watching, red carpets are also just a lot of fun.The eight stars on this list seemed to have a firm grasp of all of those points, based on the ways they navigated the many red carpets that they graced. Some used the carpets to play muse to particular designers, while others used them to challenge beauty stigmas. All, needless to say, turned countless heads while doing it.Zoe SaldañaMore looks →In Saint Laurent at the Academy Awards in March.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesIn Saint Laurent at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in March.Danny Moloshok/ReutersIn Saint Laurent at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in February.Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn Saint Laurent at the EE British Academy Film Awards in February.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockIn Saint Laurent at the Golden Globes in January.Caroline Brehman/EPA, via ShutterstockThe “Emilia Pérez” actress received a staggering amount of trophies, winning best supporting actress awards at the the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards, the British Academy Film Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Academy Awards. She had an equally strong style showing: Ms. Saldaña, who has worked with the stylist Petra Flannery, wore a number of layered, ruffled and sculptural creations by Saint Laurent, whose top designer, Anthony Vaccarello, was among the “Emilia Pérez” producers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On the Ground at the Governors Ball 2025 Oscars Party

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      Adrien Brody, with his best actor statuette, for “The Brutalist.”Zoe Saldaña, who won best supporting actress for her role in “Emilia Pérez.”Conan O’Brien, who hosted the ceremony. Paul Tazewell, the “Wicked” costume designer, with his Oscar.Kieran Culkin, holding his statuette, with his manager Emily Gerson Saines.From left, Sean Baker and Samantha Quan of “Anora,” holding Oscars, and behind them, Wolfgang Puck.Willem Dafoe.Brandon Wilson of “Nickel Boys.”A server, in the shadows.Basel Adra, left, and Yuval Abraham, winners of the award for best documentary feature film for “No Other Land.” The director Gints Zilbalodis, who won for his animated feature “Flow.”Guests at the party. More

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      In Zoe Saldaña, a Choreographer Finds His Dream Dancer

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      The Academy Award-nominated actress discovers her inner dancer in “Emilia Pérez” with the help of the choreographer Damien Jalet.Zoe Saldaña is an actress, but buried inside her is a highly trained dancer. This has always been obvious to me; the film “Emilia Pérez” has made it clear to the world. Finally, Saldaña — a devoted ballet student through her childhood and teenage years — can be recognized for the force that she is: an extraordinary mover.All actors use their bodies, but Saldaña has long been on another plane. She doesn’t just interpret characters, she moves through them with such salient physicality that her body often has as much to say as the dialogue she speaks. Even in the TV series “Lioness,” in which she plays a fierce Central Intelligence Agency officer, her body guides her like a coiled spring — a taut, muscular vessel of strength and sensitivity.In Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” with choreography by Damien Jalet, Saldaña’s dancing is front and center. And it is a meaningful part of why her portrayal of Rita, a Mexican lawyer helping a cartel boss with gender confirmation surgery, earned an Academy Award nomination.Jalet should have been nominated, too, but there are no Oscars for choreography. Yet his contribution is immeasurable. The story of “Emilia Pérez” is unorthodox enough; even more unconventional is the way it unfolds through music and dance. The songs’ merit is questionable; they employ, at times, employ the worst kind of Broadway-musical talk-singing. But Jalet’s choreography — sometimes invisibly, sometimes clearly — grounds the film.In “Emilia Pérez,” dance is the pathway for Saldaña’s character to become more outspoken, more comfortable in her body.Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 — WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS — PATHÉ FILMS — FRANCE 2 CINÉMA 2024.Jalet has a partner in Saldaña whose speed and exactness in gestural vocabulary electrify scenes without falling into the sketchy territory of mime. In a film about physical transformation, dance is the pathway for Saldaña’s character to become more outspoken, more comfortable in her skin. And dance has accomplished another transformation for Saldaña, the actress, by opening eyes to her range and radiance. Her precision is stunning.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Know About the Karla Sofía Gascón and ‘Emilia Pérez’ Controversies

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      The actress’s old social media posts have threatened to derail the film’s Oscar campaign, but backlash has been building for months for other reasons.When “Emilia Pérez” premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival last May, the reaction from critics in attendance and the jury was overwhelmingly positive.The French-produced, Spanish-language musical about a Mexican cartel boss who transitions into a woman and attempts to become a paragon of virtue won the jury prize (essentially third place) and its stars — Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz — shared the best actress award.Netflix, the powerful global streaming company that has had a best picture Oscar in its sights but out of its grasp since the 2019 ceremony, acquired the unconventional picture by the French director Jacques Audiard and launched an imposing awards campaign. Widely embraced by the film industry, “Emilia Pérez” received 13 Oscar nominations last month — leading this year’s pack and falling one short of tying the record.One of those nominations belongs to Gascón, who plays the titular character and became the first openly trans actor nominated for an Academy Award. In recent weeks, she has become engulfed in controversy that has threatened to derail the awards hopes for both her and the film. But since “Emilia Pérez” debuted in select theaters and then on Netflix late last year, there has been plenty of backlash on multiple fronts that has marred its pathway to Oscar glory. Here are the broad strokes of the controversies.Karla Sofía Gascón’s Resurfaced Social Media PostsLast week, the journalist Sarah Hagi unearthed offensive statements that Gascón posted in Spanish on X over the last few years. The disparaging comments touched on topics like George Floyd, Islam, and even the 2021 Oscar ceremony.Gascón has since apologized, deleted her X account and given a lengthy interview on CNN en Español that she booked without Netflix’s involvement or authorization. She has also stayed active on Instagram, defending herself against criticism.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Watch Zoe Saldaña Confront Corrupt Politicians in ‘Emilia Pérez’

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      The director Jacques Audiard narrates the star’s passionate musical performance from the film.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.The actress Zoe Saldaña dons a red suit and fiercely works the room in this high-intensity sequence from the musical drama “Emilia Pérez.”Saldaña’s character, Rita, a lawyer in Mexico City, attends a gala with politicians while the title character Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón) delivers a speech. This dreamlike sequence has Rita going table to table to confront attendees about their scandals, misdeeds and corruption as she sings the song “El Mal.” Emilia contributes verses from a lectern.The film’s French director, Jacques Audiard, narrates the sequence, discussing the rapid tempo of the song (they sped it up because Saldaña’s singing and dancing skills could meet the challenge), as well as working with nonprofessionals on intricate choreography (by Damien Jalet).Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘Emilia Pérez’ Review: A Song and Dance of Transformation

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      The star of Jacques Audiard’s showy new musical about a trans Mexican crime boss, Karla Sofía Gascón, adds soul to the melodrama. Zoe Saldaña also shines.In the floridly off-kilter “Emilia Pérez,” the director Jacques Audiard throws so much at you — gory crime-scene photos, a menacing cartel boss, a singing-and-dancing Zoe Saldaña — that you don’t dare blink, almost. Set largely in present-day Mexico City, the fast-track story follows a beleaguered lawyer, Rita (a very good Saldaña), who’s hired by a powerful drug lord, Manitas (a wonderful Karla Sofía Gascón), for an unusual job. Manitas, who presents as a man but identifies as a woman, wants help with clandestinely obtaining gender-affirming surgery and with tidying up some of the complications that come from a violent enterprise.Audiard, a French filmmaker and critical favorite with a string of impressive credits, likes changing it up. He’s partial to people and stories on the margins, though is especially drawn to crime stories; much of one of his finest films, “A Prophet,” takes place in prison. He also likes dipping in and out of genres while playing with and, at times, undermining their conventions, embracing an unorthodoxy that can extend to his characters. The protagonist in “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” for one, is an outright thug but also a would-be concert pianist who, at one point, shows up at a recital bloodied after nearly beating another man to death.The complications in “Emilia Pérez” emerge in quick succession. After the brisk, eventful opener — featuring a murder trial, an unjust verdict and two musical numbers — Rita is being driven to a secret location by armed strangers, her head shrouded. Before long, she is seated in a truck, face to face with Manitas, a jefe with facial tattoos, a stringy curtain of hair and an ominously threatening whisper. Manitas delivers a staccato, tuneless rap that promises Rita “considerable sums of money” in exchange for her help. “I want to be a woman,” Manitas reveals sotto voce through soft lips and a mouthful of golden teeth.Rita agrees to help, though there’s little to suggest that she could deny Manitas’s request. To that end, Rita begins jetting around the world looking for a discreet, willing surgeon for Manitas, an expedition that, during one stop, finds her in a circular-shaped Bangkok clinic where she, the surgical team and gowned, bandaged patients are soon singing and striking poses. As Rita and a surgeon discuss options for Manitas, the doctor begins sing-chanting words like “mammaplasty” and “vaginoplasty” and “laryngoplasty,” which others pick up as a refrain. As bodies and the camera spin inside the clinic, Audiard cuts to an overhead shot of the facility, exuberantly tapping into his inner Busby Berkeley.The song-and-dance numbers — the score and songs are by Clément Ducol and Camille, and the choreography is by Damien Jalet — range from the intimate to the outsized, and are integrated throughout. Most seem like manifestations of private thoughts, as in an early number in which Rita voices aloud a trial argument that she’s mentally prepping while in a grocery store. When she exits into the jeweled city night, she is met by a rising rumble of voices from passers-by who are chanting “rising and falling.” As she walks on, her words shift into song, her movements become stylized, and the passers-by turn into an ensemble. Audiard then begins folding in images of Rita typing on a laptop as she sings.At first, this shift between inner and outer realities, between the ostensibly material world of contemporary Mexico and the metaphysical world of the characters, is jarring and amusing. From the start, the movie hooks you because of its abrupt turns, how it veers into places that, tonally, narratively and emotionally, you don’t expect. Yet while Audiard has productively combined classic genres and present-day sensibilities before, even the more personal, confessional numbers here add little more than novelty. It’s galvanizing when Rita belts a song — to herself, to us — about the corruption of Mexican leaders assembled at a banquet, but only because the movie is acknowledging a world that it otherwise uses as a fanciful stage.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Karla Sofía Gascón of ‘Emilia Pérez’ Could Make Oscar History

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      There has never been a movie quite like “Emilia Pérez,” so it’s fitting that its star Karla Sofía Gascón is one of a kind, too.In the film from the director Jacques Audiard, Gascón plays a Mexico City cartel kingpin who fakes death in order to transition abroad in secret. Years after her gender-affirming surgery, the newly rechristened Emilia contacts the lawyer who helped arrange it (Zoe Saldaña) and has one more request: a reunion with the unsuspecting wife (Selena Gomez) and children she left behind, even though returning to the scene of her old crimes could have dire consequences.The multitude of genres suggested by this synopsis — a gritty drug-world exposé, a family melodrama, a trans-empowerment narrative — are further complicated by the fact that “Emilia Pérez” is a musical, meaning the characters are liable to break into song whether they’re in a love scene or clashing in a heated gunfight. In a film full of big swings, it’s hard to imagine any of the wild ideas holding together if it weren’t for Gascón, who can contain all of those multitudes in a single freighted look. Many pundits believe that after Netflix releases “Emilia Pérez” in November, Gascón will make history as the first openly trans actress nominated for an Oscar.In May, the 52-year-old Gascón was the breakout star of the Cannes Film Festival, where “Emilia Pérez” won a best actress award that was shared among all of the movie’s leading women. Since her castmates had returned home before the awards ceremony, an overcome Gascón took the stage on their behalf, and her emotional speech was the night’s highlight. At the microphone for nearly six minutes, Gascón flitted between Spanish and English as she tearfully asserted the humanity of trans people, joked about bribing the jurors, paid romantic tribute to her co-star Gomez, then apologized to Gomez’s boyfriend for her ardor.Afterward, Gascón tried to explain her speech’s breathless sprawl. “I’ve never been given a prize,” she told reporters. “I’ve mostly been given blows and kicks.”Spanish-speaking audiences may already be familiar with Gascón, a veteran of Mexican telenovelas who starred in the hit 2013 film “Nosotros los Nobles” and transitioned six years ago while in the public eye. “It was very difficult,” she told me recently over lunch in Los Angeles. “People knew me a certain way and then I changed, so I constantly felt that I had to justify myself. I was always fighting with everyone.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Substance’ and ‘Emilia Pérez’ Cause a Stir at Cannes

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      “The Substance” features Demi Moore in go-for-broke mode, while “Emilia Pérez” is a musical crime drama that defies description.Maybe “Megalopolis” was just an amuse-bouche.After Francis Ford Coppola’s $120 million movie polarized audiences during the first week of the Cannes Film Festival, the big swings have continued with “The Substance” and “Emilia Pérez,” two much-discussed films that are either stone-cold classics or total fiascos depending on whom you talk to here.But at a festival where a dozen new movies arrive every day and each title is in danger of being overshadowed, there’s nothing more effective than causing a commotion.The gory horror-comedy “The Substance” casts Demi Moore as Elizabeth Sparkle, an Oscar-winning actress who, as she ages, can find no better work than hosting an aerobics program. Even that gig is in danger thanks to an unscrupulous network executive (Dennis Quaid) who’s dead set on replacing Sparkle with someone younger and hotter. Backed into a corner, Sparkle decides to inject herself with the Substance, a mysterious fluid that promises a path to rejuvenation.But this procedure goes several steps beyond Botox and fillers. After taking the Substance, Sparkle’s younger self (Margaret Qualley) emerges painfully from her body and sets about reclaiming the aerobics gig that the network yanked away. The only catch is that Sparkle’s younger and older selves must trade off every week, agreeing to hibernate while the other one goes out on the town. Failure to maintain that balance could have gruesome effects on their bodies, and it isn’t long before this peaceful trade-off becomes an increasingly disfiguring tug of war.“The Substance,” directed by Coralie Fargeat, offers plenty to talk about, from Moore’s go-for-broke, bare-it-all performance to an outrageous finale that consistently pushes the line on gross-out gore. But the most spirited discussions at Cannes are over whether the movie is trenchant or skin-deep. David Ehrlich of IndieWire praised it as the best of the fest, but several people I’ve spoken to were positively angry about having watched it. Maybe any reaction is the right one when it comes to something so gleefully provocative: In a post online, the writer Iana Murray called the film “shallow” and “painfully unsubtle” but added, “i had a hell of a time though why lie.”“The Substance” is one of the higher-rated movies on the Screen International critics’ grid, a compilation of reactions that often presages the winner of the Palme d’Or, Cannes’ top prize. But another Palme contender, Jacques Audiard’s audacious “Emilia Pérez,” has prompted nearly as much conversation and debate. A crime drama that’s also a trans empowerment epic that’s also a full-blown movie musical, “Emilia Pérez” is virtually impossible to sum up: Imagine Pedro Almodóvar meets “Sicario” meets Jennifer Lopez’s wacky visual album “This is Me … Now: A Love Story,” and you’re only halfway there.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More