Worth: $14.00
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Cast:
Melissa Barrera, Paul Mescal, Rosy de Palma, Tara Morice, Nicola da Silva, Benedict Hardie, Richard Brancatisano, Marina Tamayo
Intro:
Mescal embodies the masculine archetype in his physical presence while adding more delicate nuances of vulnerability.
Benjamin Millepied is a world-renowned choreographer and dancer, best known for starring in and choreographing Black Swan (2010). Since then, he has directed commercials, music videos and short films, including Reflections for luxury jewellery brand Van Cleef and Arpels based on his original choreography.
It’s no surprise that his first feature, Carmen, uses dance as the heart of the narrative.
Loïc Barrere, who scripted French comedy TV series Alphonse President, along with writer Alexander Dinelaris (Birdman), teamed with Millepied for the story and script.
The choreography is credited by Millepied as being inspired both by Prosper Mérimée’s original Carmen novel and Alexander Pushkin’s poem ‘The Gypsies’. Merimee wrote Carmen in 1845, but there is little from that source, or Bizet’s enduring opera of the same name, to be found in this reimagining of the original story. Where Merimee’s Carmen is treacherous and amoral and Bizet’s version is a wild femme fatale, Millepied has brought us a young woman who is pure archetype.
The Latin word carmen can mean a song, poem, or magic spell – appropriate for a character associated with song, dance and seduction. This reworking carries no hint of seduction on Carmen’s part. Ex soldier Aidan simply falls for her beauty and purity, then kills her captor before they go on the run.
A glance at the original male character of the book, Don Jose, depicts him as a murdering brigand. The opera has him leaving his wife as he becomes prey to Carmen’s wiles, a deserter and murderer, who is then enraged by Carmen’s infidelity, killing her in a jealous rage.
The one common thread is Carmen’s desire for freedom. In the modern tale, Mexican actress Melissa Barrera (In the Heights) has Carmen crossing the border, on the run from an evil cartel. Beyond that, we leave the traditional canon behind. War veteran Aidan (Aftersun and Normal People star Paul Mescal) suffers PTSD and has a sister rather than a wife who he tries to support by taking part in a corrupt border guard. This is where their paths cross, fate intervenes, and they end up in Los Angeles where Carmen seeks out her mother’s friend Masilda (Rossy de Palma).
Though the film frees Carmen from her seductress stereotype, Millepied uses the characters to express a massive gender divide in the culture, and the male of the species doesn’t come out of it too well. Women are depicted as life force, connected to earth, epitomising beauty. In contrast, men are empty, violent, devoid of life. Aidan has been damaged by war, and to support his sister, then Carmen, he knows only to use violence to make money, first as an unwilling vigilante, then in a brutal fight club. Dust, desert, guns are the domain of men in this world.
Mescal embodies the masculine archetype in his physical presence while adding more delicate nuances of vulnerability. He creates a believable plot dynamic of being out of his depth in Los Angeles, just as Carmen is coming into her own. A scene where he reaches out to his sister is one of the most grounded and affecting in the film.
Barrera is the beautiful ingenue claiming her female power by singing a passionate ballad in the club, a kind of ‘coming out’ as the epitome of feminine perfection that involves one of the choreographed group dance routines that punctuate the story. Another dance occurs as she is taken up by a band of female carnival performers when she and Aidan, watching ruefully from the sidelines, first arrive in LA. The pure female archetype is laboured a bit more with a mural of the Virgin Mary festooned with fairy lights, where she and Aidan have ‘the’ sex scene.
De Palma creates a terrific counterbalance and manages to carry most of the film’s second act. There’s a reason Gaultier had her model for him and Almodovar used her eccentric caricature of a screen presence to point up his films. She is a unique event on her own and conveys some of the force of nature of the original Carmen. Elsa Pataky endows her cameo as bartender Gabrielle with ribald earthiness, but it’s Marina Tamayo in the non-speaking role of Carmen’s mother that really taps into untamed female power. Her ‘fight for your life’ flamenco is a showstopper. Staged on a platform of bare boards against an unforgiving desert backdrop as she faces off a vicious gunman, this was a film opener that was going to be hard to match.
The series of musical pieces, from Aidan’s plaintive acoustic guitar to an acapella folk song from Carmen as she comforts a young boy, to a blistering gangsta hip hop number at the fight club, create interesting, diverse set pieces, though nothing sustains the promise of that powerful opener. The score by Oscar nominated composer Nicholas Britell (If Beale Street Could Talk) drives the film with more energy than the script can summon, and the photography by Jörg Widmer (Pina) is masterful in its broad sweep of landscape, depth of colour and handheld camera energy of many group scenes.
Mérimée’s novel quotes Greek poet Palladas’ maxim that “Every woman is as bitter as gall. But she has two good moments: one in bed, the other at her death.”
Millepied had a great intention to lift Carmen from that damning stereotype but may have gone too far towards feminine idealisation in the process.
