Carmen

Filmed in Spain by Spaniards, this is a Spanish tale based on a French novel and the French opera which it inspired. Saura's flamenco "Carmen" is an exciting work of art.

A modern ensemble of musicians and dancers is rehearsing a flamenco interpretation of the Carmen story. The producer and star dancer is Antonio (Antonio Gades). The setting appears to be suburban Madrid, but we see so little of the world outside the rehearsal room that it hardly matters. Antonio has done his research, and has become obsessed with the Carmen legend. He chooses a girl named Carmen to play 'his' Carmen, and life begins tragically to imitate art ...

The opening credits are backed by Dore prints with Bizet playing. This is clearly going to be a production which makes clever use of the many-layered Carmen myth. And so it proves. Antonio pores over his copy of Merimee, and as a knot of singers and guitarists breaks into an improvised buleria, we hear Bizet jarringly overlaid. Antonio is being pulled in two directions, simultaneously possessed by the duende of authentic flamenco and lured by the bewitching Carmen of 19th-century romanticism. One current, the flamenco, is spontaneous and natural, the other is unSpanish and highly theatrical. Both are warring and fermenting within Antonio's psyche.

Cats don't come when you call them, observes Antonio, and they come when you don't call. Herein is the essence of Carmen's wild character. Antonio has Cristina as his senior dancer (the marvellous Cristina Hoyos), but as he tells her, good though she is, she is not 'the' Carmen. He travels to Seville (where else?) in search of his ideal, and there he finds his leading lady - and his nemesis. The young gypsy beauty scrambles into the dance class late, her unruly dignity immediately apparent, and we see in Antonio's face that he knows. This is 'his' Carmen.

The film's artistic conceit is a subtle movement between actuality and fantasy, echoing the conflict between the truth of flamenco and the falseness of the Bizet Carmen. Are Cristina and Carmen at each other's throats in real life, or is this Antonio's heated imagination expanding on the Tabacalera clash? Is the Habanera scene a straightforward rehearsal, or Antonio's reverie? Does Carmen really appear wearing the high comb and mantilla, or has Antonio succumbed to the myth?

Antonio 'sculpts' Carmen, teaching the youngster how to dance, and how to feel the dance. He pushes her hard and makes enormous physical demands of her, yet from the first cigarette the dynamics are established - Carmen is unknowable, untameable. Antonio will end by destroying his creation. He is Don Jose, and he can't help it.

In this deeply attractive film, some scenes transcend even the excellent norm. Such a scene is the Tabacalera number. The women pound the tables in a flamenco rhythm as they sing the haunting "Don't Go Near The Brambles". The hostility between Cristina and Carmen boils over into violence, faithfully reproducing Merimee and Bizet, and all portrayed in dance. As Antonio arrives in the role of Don Jose to arrest the gypsy wildcat, Bizet's tragic motif begins to play.

Carmen and Antonio drink a glass of manzanilla together, symbolically cementing their relationship. At her bidding, Antonio dances the Farruca, the 'baile jondo', the key which unlocks the secret of flamenco. Aroused, Carmen joins in, and the dance (always a metaphor for copulation) merges into actual lovemaking. But delight is followed by disappointment. At 2am, Antonio wakes to find Carmen grabbing her clothes and slipping away. It is futile to ask why. She is Carmen.

Antonio dances alone in the rehearsal room. The room's stark cuboid, with its whole-wall mirror, makes an interesting contrast with his fluid, mobile form. Does dancing help him think? Do his thoughts inspire his dance? The image of a man moving beautifully in a bare box of a room is one of the film's quiet triumphs.

At this crucial point in their blossoming love affair, Carmen and Antonio begin to take divergent paths. This is intelligently depicted by the use of parallel scenes. Antonio sweeps open the drapes to let in the first light of a new day while, somewhere else, electronic grilles part in a parody of Antonio's curtains to admit Carmen to a prison. She is visiting the jailbird husband whom she doesn't love. Antonio has grown emotionally: Carmen is a low-life hustler incapable of change. In a Christ-like gesture, Antonio drinks a solitary glass of manzanilla, the cup of the passion which will not pass him by.

The best scene of the film, straddling reality and fantasy, ordinariness and high artifice, dance and dialogue, is the poker game. The jailbird Jose Fernandez has left prison and joined the troupe. There is a powerful flamenco dance in which Antonio and the gitano confront each other and fight. Afterwards, as he gets up from the floor, Jose removes his wig and others gather round, solicitous for his well-being. Once more, the film has drawn us into an emotional conflict, only to strip away the illusion.

Other treasures abound. The corrida is lovingly depicted in mock-dance, with balletic veronicas and a silent faena: then there is the 'dance-off' between a jealous Antonio and an imperious Carmen, with their contrasting rhythmic signatures: and the squalor of betrayal and abuse in which the story culminates. The presence of Paco de Lucia, legendary guitarist and the scion of a great flamenco dynasty, is in itself a certificate of the film's artistic authenticity.

Verdict - a superb, unfussy modern work which captures the strong flavour of this ancient Spanish folk-art on film.

Carmen is one of the best films I've ever seen. It's hard to say whose performance is best: Antonio Gades, Cristina Hoyos and Laura del Sol are superb.They dance their souls out. It's a beautiful tale of inseparability of life and myth; myth penetrates everyday life. Dance becomes life and entire life is danced out. Real people at one and the same time live their own lives and become somebody else, act out the parts of lovers of old. The magic is continuing.

Passionate, dramatic, riveting as Flamenco itself, the film is simply amazing. It is set on the immortal Bizet's music. The original music is written and performed by one of the greatest classical guitarists, leading proponent of the Modern Flamenco style, Paco de Lucia who plays a musician with the same name. Legendary Flamenco dancer and choreographer Antonio Gades co/wrote the script and choreographed this fabulous version of the celebrated Georges Bizet/Prosper Mérimée novella/opera. He plays a main character Antonio, the famous dancer/choreographer who works on retelling the story of Carmen in the Flamenco style that combines dances with singing and rhythmic hand clapping and has a highly charged level of dynamics that appeals enormously to the viewers.

Brilliant and graceful Cristina Hoyos whose technical excellence matches the elegant artistry of her dancing shines in the supporting role. Hoyos had been the first dancer in Gades' company for twenty years (1968-1988) and she was the protagonist of three films that Carlos Saura made of Gades' three great shows: "Bodas de Sangre" (1978), "Carmen" (1983) and "El Amor Brujo" (1985). Gorgeous Laura del Sol is a young dancer named Carmen in whom Antony sees from the first sight another Carmen, who was immortalized by two Frenchmen, the writer Prosper Mérimée in his most famous novella written in 1846 that had inspired George Bizet's world famous Opéra-Comique version from 1875.

As in the opera and in the novella, Carmen in Saura's film is desirable and deadly, the ultimate femme fatale who has to be free above anything else. She could not tolerate the possessive love of any man and would prefer death to submission. There some 50 movie adaptations of the story and the opera to the screen, and as different as they are, they all have in common the only possible tragic end. Saura/Gades' film is unique as the most sensual of all and truly Spanish. I fell in love with it from the first time I saw it over twenty years ago and it is as special and beautiful today as it was back then. Highly recommended.

On the face of it, Carlos Saura's 1983 Carmen is simply yet another version - to join dozens of others - of Bizet's world-famous opera, using flamenco music and dance, and a modern story-line, alongside elements of the opera. Following in the footsteps of many a Hollywood musical, Saura sets his story in the period of rehearsal before a new production, except in this case there is no successful opening night as the climax of the movie, but a tragic death echoing the opera. The music and dancing are dramatic, passionate and exciting, especially for those of us who love flamenco; and the weaving together of the modern characters and plot with those of the opera is effective, if somewhat contrived.

There is, however, an ironic aspect to the film. Possibly no country in the western world has a stronger culture than Spain. Spanish food, drink, language, literature, music, dance and much else are unique and immediately identifiable. Yet one of its national icons - the free-spirited gypsy Carmen, who seduces and abandons men at will - is a totally French creation. Bizet, who never set foot in Spain, based his 1875 opera on a story by Prosper Merimée, also a Frenchman; and no matter how Spanish his music sounds, it is merely imitation. So for Saura to base a film on Carmen has a significance not shared by the other two films in his "flamenco trilogy" - Blood Wedding and Love the Magician - where the originals are quintessentially Spanish.

It is tempting therefore to regard the film as a kind of reclamation for Spain of Bizet's pseudo-Spanish Carmen. And certainly in the adaptation for guitar of some of Bizet's music, and in the translation to flamenco dance of some of the action of the opera, such a reclamation or reconciliation has taken place. But I for one wish that Saura had gone further; had deconstructed the original stereotypes; and had shown that by the late 20th century José had grown up, and could refrain from knifing Carmen, no matter how Spanish he might feel and how free-spirited she might be. In other words, perhaps a happy Hollywood ending would not have been such a bad idea!

The movie within the movie - a concept done many times in the history of cinema. It is accomplished here as well as in any.

If you love Carmen, you'll love this version.

If you love flamenco, you'll love this version.

The plot of the classic opera is played out in the actual rehearsal of the opera by a flamenco troupe. The music is authentic. The direction wonderful.

If you like dancing, you'll love this version.

There is tragedy. There is passion. There is intrigue.

There is...

Carmen.