Carmen

Vicente Aranda is one of the craftsmen of the Spanish cinema. And that is a guaranty. Even if the plot of the movie is not very original, you can count on finding something worth seeing in his movies.

Take Carmen as an example: we've been told this story a thousand times before, but introducing some interesting variations (like the fact that Merimée himself becomes a character) he makes you see the story from an other side. Moreover, I found some really fascinating images in the picture, specially those in which Paz Vega shows her original talent.

If you start thinking about the set up in which this film is inserted, you will want to see it. At least i did it: This is an adaptation of a novel, by a french writer (immortalized in an opera by a french composer). The writer, Mérimée, was as well an historian-archaeologist-translator; meaning this, someone who cared for "exotism", in a time in which Spanish or Portuguese rural worlds were still considered exotic to the English and the french. That novel established the clichés and preconceptions regarding Spanish culture still considered these days (and efficiently exploited by the tourism industry). Bizet also helped establish other clichés, musical to that matter. But this film is Spanish, in production, creative minds and people involved. So this was a brilliant opportunity for a view into a distinct edge of Spanish culture described by a french and commented on by the Spanish. That was the motivation for me.

They started off quite well, and at least i think they gave a thought at what i mentioned. That's why they place Mérimée himself as a character, observing Andaluzia as a foreigner, and taking note of what he sees, even sharing space and scenes with Carmen and José. That was good, and i appreciated the audacity of crossing the line of the facts (if there ever was a real Carmen, Mérimée never got to know her).

But the problem is, they never step out of the very clichés Mérimée established. The film is visually as lush as the opera is musically. The sets are brilliantly baroque, the (excellent) production emphasizes passioned environments (operatic, as well), an orange/yellow deviating sexual mood. But they also emphasize the temperament of the characters a little too much, deviating the thing from what could have been better explored, something that could matter and that is in fact noted:

The drama is built around Carmen, and the inability for José to play the game according to her rules. Those rules are defined by cultural background, and that is where the frictions lie. Carmen comes from a branch of the Spanish culture, that transcends Spain. Gypsies, a group of nomads, a people that wouldn't, or couldn't adapt to the established norms the roman derived catholic based culture (that self and forced rejection still lasts today in most of the places). José is Basque, but that is little seen, he could be from Madrid, that in this case it would be the same, he is a cliché as well. So, it is those cultural differences that matter. This is, i mentioned, noted, but not made the center of the thing. They prefer remarking on the sensuality as the engine for the plot and sex as the motivation for the characters, that's why we have Paz Vega here, who had been in the brilliant sex-centered 'Lucía y el sexo' just 2 years before. Well she does deliver what they intended, and she is sensual for my contemporary and contextualized eyes. So it's not a matter of what they did here, but what they could have done.

Side note: one could also take Carmen as an early symbol for a female emancipation that would only really happen decades later. Is this something Mérimée observed, or something he included as part of his french more cosmopolitan way of thinking?

My opinion: 3/5

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Screen-wise, the story of 'Carmen' has lent itself to more than two dozen outings: the plot, with its core elements of jealous lovers, femme fatales and outlaws, being powerful (indeed, simplistic) enough to embrace several contemporary stylings, such as 1954's all-black Carmen Jones, 2001's 'Carmen: A Hip Hopera', and Jean-Luc Godard's 1983 film First Name: Carmen.

Similarly, while it's a popular misconception that 'Carmen' first flowed from composer Bizet's pen, the crowd-pleasing opera is just one of numerous interpretations, including dance and theatre productions, of Prosper Mérimée's 1847 source text.

Though a crowd-pleaser now, and a terrific enlivener of many a 'Classical Lite' compilation CD, opera-goers attending the 1875 premiere performance actually thought it less than the Bizet's knees, owing to its interminable chunks of dialogue, later expunged or set to music. It's those glorious songs we most associate Carmen with these days: and, tellingly, this version - a straight, self-important retelling of the novella - feels infinitely poorer for their exclusion.

As if anticipating the loss, director Aranda attempts to hold the interest during almost two hours of screen time, through full-frontal nudity, judicious smatterings of gore, and authentically course dialogue.

It's in this attention to earthy period detail that the filmmakers have really succeeded: the costumes, lighting and production design are uniformly excellent. For such a purist take, however, occasional liberties have been taken - some good, some indifferent. In a canny nod to the political climate of the age, the French soldier José has become Basque, although the use of flashbacks and the inclusion of Mérimée as a character in his own story doesn't add a great deal.

Most damagingly, the marked lack of eroticism, or sexual chemistry between Vega and Sbaraglia, is frankly baffling, while hysterical, near-burlesque turns are the order of the day. As the titular seductress, Vega resembles nothing as much as a nose-powdered catwalk model flouncing about with a broken heel.

There are several ways to misunderstand this movie and a couple of them have been shown in some of the past comments. This is a movie to be analyzed as a free recreation of a known subject and therefore not to be compared with the opera, the book or other Carmen movies seen before. It just stands for itself and I must say that this Carmen does it very well. It is a mistake to compare because that is the first step to deny movies the chance to be autonomous creative works of art. Vicente Aranda is a master of atmosphere and the art direction, the costumes and the photography are extremely well put together to achieve a pleasing aesthetic experience. Let's take it as it is.

And that brings us to the next misunderstanding. Someone complains about the typical Spanish clichés in the movie. Well, historically the movie is extremely well researched and you can see the results of that very serious work in every scene. It is not only an accurate portrait of the "black Spain" of knife and espadrille that Goya portrayed so vividly, but it's also of that part of history as seen by a foreigner fascinated with the folkloric side of that society. Honestly, anyone who doesn't want to see any cliché about Spain shouldn't buy a ticket to see Carmen, but in this case those clichés are presented before they became one and the way to see them is getting rid of our own prejudices.

Another important requirement to understand this movie properly is to speak the language. It is not acceptable to criticize any actor performance for not having understood his or her lines. If all the rest of the audience did, the problem most likely lies somewhere else. Paz Vega has an immaculate diction with her Andalusian accent and all she says is understandable and credible. Her Argentinian partner, Leonardo Sbaraglia, gives also a convincing portrait of the Basque officer that became a "bandolero", and her accent is very well learned.

No less important is to have a minimally open approach to the material. To say that Paz Vega is "horrible" suggests that the author of the phrase entered the theater for the wrong reasons. We already had in Spain a critic in one of the most prestigious papers that used to recommend us pictures he found homosexually arousing, without mentioning it explicitly. And that was not totally fair for the rest of us, especially for the ones that hadn't detected that the man was writing with parts of his anatomy that many readers didn't necessarily had to care for. I'm not suggesting at all that the reviewer had the same motivation, but the expectations must have been different as the ones of those among us that went to see a talented and beautiful actress play an almost classic role, because that's what we got. Paz Vega IS Carmen, and an excellent one, in Vicente Aranda's movie.

This is a nice movie with good performances by Paz Vega and Leonardo Sbaraglia . Of course Vicente Aranda is a legend in Spanish Cinema and surely one of the great directors in Spanish cinema but I don't think this is one of his greatest movies even if it's fine. The screenplay plays with the introduction of Merimeé as a character , it's a nice touch but it's unbelievable. The music is composed by Jose Nieto , National Spanish Prize in Cinema. I mean this movie is very good in all the technical aspects .There are very good actors in supporting roles like Antonio Dechent , Maria Botto and others . I give it 7 out of 10 cause I think this could be a better movie but as it is it is not boring at all.