Starring: Melissa Barrera, Paul Mescal, Rossy de Palmer, Elsa Pataky, Benedict Hardie, Tara Morice
Distributor: Madman films
Runtime: 116 mins. Reviewed in Jul 2023
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Carmen reimagined with larger than life ‘operatic’ set pieces, featuring an original score and songs.
This interpretation of the Carmen story, based on Prosper Merimee’s 1845 novel with influences by Pushkin’s story, The Gypsy, will be an acquired taste. With the French-born choreographer, Benjamin Millepied, now working in the US, directing his first feature film after music videos, a huge emphasis in this version is dance.
Yet, one could describe the visual style and the staging of particular scenes as ‘operatic’, stylised, set pieces, larger than life. And, yet, many of the sequences are presented with a sense of ‘realism’. But, interspersed are touches of magic realism, ghostly appearances, scenes of fire, memories.
The Internet Movie Database summary: Benjamin Millepied’s complete reimagining of Carmen tells a story through an experimental dreamscape featuring an original score and songs. Yes, an experimental dreamscape.
And dance. This is a story of a young dancer, Carmen, Mexican, her flamenco-dancing mother, menaced by a young boy from the cartels shooting her. Her mother has urged her to go to Los Angeles, to find her friend, managing a nightclub there, Massilda. But, she has to get through the border, a dreary desert outpost, staffed by former soldiers to ward off migrants, violently. One of the soldiers is Aidan, a retired Marine, relying on his sister, with some friends, a boxer, but depressed at being stranded on the border.
As regards the drama, touches of melodrama, there is shooting at the border, Aidan defending some of the refugees, helping Carmen, driving away. They are helped on the road by friendly taxi driver whose name is Angel. And another dancer friend drives them to Los Angeles. Which means than a lot of the film takes place within the nightclub, quite a range of dance which should exhilarate audiences who have come for the dancing. Aidan hangs out but feels the police will be after Carmen and himself and wants to move on. He gets an opportunity to make some money from a friend who sponsors bareknuckle fighting – which provides something of a climax for the film, but presented, as is some of the other dancing, with ballet style, but this crowd excited by the violence, a stomping dance sequence.
Barrera (In the Heights, Scream) is a dramatic Carmen. Mescal (Normal People) blends passive moments with active moments. But de Palmer draws audience attention more than the star-crossed lovers. She is a powerful presence even when not singing or dancing. Pataky has a good role as the assistant at the nightclub.
Carmen was filmed in Australia in 2021, the Broken Hill area a stand-in for the desert sequences, some drab Sydney locations for the nightclub and the boxing. And the movie includes many Australian actors, including Morice, and dancers in the cast.
There are several songs, a great deal of choral chant throughout (incorporating some of the Bizet lyrics), but the strong impact is of the musical score itself, by Nicholas Brittell, powerful at times, the score seeming to drive on the action and the drama.
Some audiences have been enraptured, others alienated, and all stops in between.
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