Carmen

Carmen is a movie that tries to be too many different things at once. It wants to be a musical, a modern dance recital, a drama about ptsd and romance, and an art house forward film. The end result as you can imagine is a slow, bloated mess.

The positives are the performances from Melissa and Paul. This isn't an easy film to act in due to the nature of the story, but they both commit to their roles and deserved a better director.

Outside of the cinematography which accurately captured the mood of the story, there's nothing else to praise. Benjamin Millepied's cinematic vision is pretentious and dreadful. His eye for directing is better suited for the stage, not film.

Predictable and quite basic storyline. Yet, the movie is beautifully done!

If you are into action movies, or dramas - you will find yourself scratching your head a little.. but take it as a new type of presentation.. After all, aren't you already tired of the same gangster, mob stories with racing cars and heavy shootings? (I am! All of the action movies are the same: no real plot line just chasings and gory images.. )

For me, Carmen was like a realistic play that we watch on stages: dialogues are mingled with dance and music to express feelings more than mere images, at times alternating the past and the present, the cause and the effect, the reality and the imaginary..

It's 'almost' an art movie because the image was not spectacular.. Instead, the soundtrack was. Among others, Paul Mescal (I had no idea who he was) sang a song amazingly, reminding me I wanted to learn how to play the guitar..

So the director who choreographed Black Swan, gives us a reimagining on Carmen. It's a musical, it's a dance spectacular.its drama filled study of the border issue in the USA. It's an arthouse study of all of the aforementioned. To summarise, someone has tried to get a quart into a pint pot and ended up with a hot mess. An interesting hot mess. But a hot mess nonetheless.

You can a movie about all of the above but not all at once.

That said, the movie is very well made. There is religious symbolism in the washing of feet, allusions to PTSD, slow motion action scenes, nice cinematography, the director is not without talent and the acting by the leads is very good. It is slow but somehow never boring and worth a watch if you consider yourself a cinephile.

Carmen (2022) directed by Benjamin Millepied, retakes the original 1845 French novel plus references 1954 Carmen Jones film, and not the opera narrative. Dance forms becomes the centrepiece of an unsure love story.

It takes liberty to reinterpret the original setting to the U. S./Mexico border, supposed to be set in the Northern Mexican states. Actually it's Oz, the Australian landscape passing for Mexican desert scenery.

Although the film's intent to depict borderlands culture via Oz's landscape, there's odd cultural references like a repeated image of the Chilean Virgin Mary (Lady of Grace), in place of the Mexican Virgen de Guadalupe icon.

Carmen, helmed by Mexican actor, Melissa Barrera and Aidan helmed by Irish actor, Paul Mescal meet under certain circumstances: undocumented crossings (Carmen entering the U. S.) and paramilitary border patrolling (Aidan, retired Marine as a patrol volunteer). Their climatic interaction begins there as they flee together to "ciudad de los angeles" (L. A.).

Many scenes can suggest magical realism or surreal situations. There's some weak writing, with a contribution by Broadway's Alexander Dinelaris, but its strength is the dancing.

Millepied's background as a dancer, support the beautiful choreography that's a lot superior than the noted film, "La La Land". Unlike the prior, Carmen references the social reality of U. S. immigration policies and urban decay.

Dance scenes are breathtaking and employ Iberian and Latin American traditions from Flamenco to Tango. There's even a nod to L. A. contemporary urban dance forms like "Crumping".

The presence of Rossy de Palma, from Spanish cinematic royalty, cements a mystical creature as Carmen's aunt. She is a storyteller, recording Carmen's struggles as well as her love for Aidan.

At the end of the film, viewers navigate through muddled, slow burning action but it's worth it for the dancing and de Palma's acting. Its soundtrack has original compositions by Mexican musicians like Julieta Venegas and historic borderland ballads by Lydia Mendoza!

I had high hopes for this feature. I'm a ballet and opera fan and am familiar with Benjamin Millepede. Unfortunately this was a sometimes excruciatingly slow movie to watch. There were some highly stylized scenes that were memorable..most of them were not. The scenes for the most part did not hang together to form a whole storyline. I would have liked to have known the 2 lead characters and their back story but that wasn't really presented. The film did not engage me...I found myself looking at my phone and wanting to know when the movie would end. I will say that I have walked out of a very few movies before they ended but I did stay for the ending of this film so that is something.