Review: Carmen — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

Carmen

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Rating: R

Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

Stars: Melissa Barrera, Paul Mescal, Marina Tamayo

Writers: Loïc Barrere, Alexander Dinelaris, Lisa Loomer

Director: Benjamin Millepied

Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival

Visually breathtaking, exhilaratingly acted, and throbbing with dance interludes that measure up to the best of Bob Fosse, Carmen is nonetheless an uncertain film that attempts a folklórico dance atop a wobbly three-legged stool of music, melodrama, and social commentary.

The film’s wired-together structure is every bit as precarious as its supposed basis in Georges Bizet’s 19th century opera of the same name. Those of us who know and love Bizet’s Carmen will search in vain for virtually any parallels, other than there is a boy and a girl, and someone dies at the fadeout. (As Bugs Bunny wisely said, “Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?”)

Dark-eyed, raven-haired Melissa Barrera (Scream) stars as Carmen, a strong-willed young woman who sneaks across the U.S.-Mexico border fleeing a cartel that, in the harrowing opening scene, murders her mother (Marina Tamayo) as she performs a thunderously defiant folk dance. It’s a fiercely powerful opening, thanks entirely to the breathless dancing of Tamayo, who is among Australia’s most notable Flamenco choreographer/performers. Her occasional reappearances, as Carmen’s guiding spirit, lend a welcome, ethereal sensibility to the often gritty proceedings.

Things go poorly for Carmen almost as soon as she slips under The Wall — but they go even worse for Aidan (Paul Mescal, Oscar nominated for last year’s Aftersun), a PTSD-suffering vet who has volunteered to help the U.S. Border Patrol round up desperate refugees for deportation. After a hail of deadly gunfire, Carmen and Aidan find themselves on the run across the Arizona desert (Australia’s outback standing in for America’s Southwest), the police close on their heels.

The two hitch a ride to Los Angeles, where Carmen’s mother once co-owned a dance club with an imposing folklórico performer/choreographer named Masilda (Rossy de Palma, a frequent collaborator with Mexican director Pedro Almodóvar). Carmen, who has inherited her mother’s terpsichorean talents, fits right in with Masilda’s dance troupe, but Aiden warns her they must keep on the move. To make some money, he signs up for a fisticuffs-to-the-death at a local fight club, and I guess I don’t need to tell you how that goes. Opera, remember?

It’s really not much of a plot, when you write it out. If not for director/choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s extended dance sequence — masterfully staged and filmed against color-saturated desert landscapes, a dreamlike traveling carnival, and crystalline night skies — the whole show would have fit into an hour of primetime TV, including commercials.

And perhaps that’s one more thing this Carmen has in common with opera: The bare-bones story is something more to be tolerated than featured. It’s all about the dance, the scenery, the haunting music by Nicolas Britell (Moonlight, TV’s Succession), and the characters whose lack of discernible backstories render them more monumental than human.

Beautiful to look at and pleasing to hear, Carmen remains empty at its center. A march of toreadors might have helped, but I doubt it.

The original version of this review incorrectly identified the dancer playing Carmen’s mother as the actress Tara Morice. The dancer is Marina Tamayo, and the text has been corrected.