User Reviews

Carmen is a film that's difficult to pigeonhole. It skillfully combines genres, including a captivating love story, a mythical narrative, a musical extravaganza, and a modern interpretation of a timeless opera. Under the guidance of Benjamin Millepied, a dancer and choreographer, we are taken on a journey to the rugged landscapes of the U. S.-Mexico border, where passion, violence and beauty intersect and intertwine.

The central character, played by Melissa Barrera, infuses Carmen with life. After witnessing her mother's demise at the hands of a drug cartel in Mexico, Carmen manages to escape. Along her journey, she encounters Aidan (portrayed by Paul Mescal), a former Marine who has become a vigilante patrolling the border. Despite their backgrounds, they discover love amidst the chaos and uncertainty. On their quest to evade capture and stay ahead of the cartel and the authorities, they cross paths with individuals like Masilda (brought to life by Rossy de Palma), a friend of Carmen's mother who runs a dance club in Los Angeles.

Carmen doesn't adhere to Bizet's opera; it deviates from its songs and music. Nicholas Britell has crafted a score that seamlessly blends flamenco and pop influences. The dance sequences are mesmerising, showcasing Millepied's choreography and Barrera's talent as a dancer.

One aspect that stands out in the movie is its cinematography, skillfully executed by Jörg Widmer. He magnificently captures the essence of the desert, the city, and the night sky, creating visuals that possess a dreamlike mythical quality with a touch of reality. The film delves into thought-provoking themes such as immigration, identity and freedom, handling them subtly without preaching or oversimplification.

Some areas could be improved - moments of confusion in the plot, elements that stretch believability in the third act, and the characters could have been fully developed and their motivations clearer. Some of the dialogue occasionally leans towards clichés and melodrama making it challenging for the film to find its tone as it shifts between romance, action, comedy and tragedy.

Carmen ambitiously tackles a range of subjects. But it doesn't always succeed in doing so. Nevertheless, it remains a beautiful film that captivated me despite its shortcomings. However, others may not connect with it on such a level. Regardless Carmen deserves recognition for its originality and vision despite some flaws in execution and overall coherence.

I liked watching it, although I didn't fall in love with it.

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!

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.

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.

Carmen

The movie just lacked any pacing, it was glacially slow, in the last mission impossible Tom took two and a half hours to get a key and find the door the key unlocked, we had action, this movie lacked even a rudimentary story of any not and we had little action, it was torture!

In a nutshell immigrant gets caught crossing American border and army marine with PTSD stupidly shoots colleague and involves himself with the female immigrant. The rest of the movie they were on the run.

The music grated throughout as it gave the impression we were watching something meaningful and profound but it was all squalid and vapid. The mother reflections were absurd.

This was overall an art house indulgence that perhaps needn't have been made as it amounted to style over substance without a voice or a heart. It was so performative, Carmen traces one of her mother's friends and is let into the dancers dressing room, "is that you Carmen?", I would reply yet it is, instead we get a drawn out 5 minutes of insignificant platitudes' it was terrible! Aidan calls his sister and she answers the phone and say who is this, I would have answered it's me, instead we get a drawn out absurd pause.

What really got me was the assertion Carmen was a strong independent woman, they kept repeating this ad nauseum, but I never her saw her do anything apart from rely on others.

At best this is a two outta 10, I enjoyed the dancing but the rest was rubbish!

The jury is still out on Paul Mescal's acting, he certainly does very little, but I have yet to see him do anything that stretches these stiff roles, it's all a bit blank.

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..

As it's heralded as Carmen, and clearly veering towards Carmen Jones, I am utterly confused as to what this mess was.

Our Music Master introduced us to opera with the Carmen Jones more modern version. How much pleasure we gained from singing "stand up and fight until you hear the bell" and "down by the walls of Sevilla lives my good friend Lilias Pasta"

I'm just so confused as to how this had none of the operatics. It was awful and yet I was SO excited to watch this. It was a mismatch of desultory exchanges and unexciting converstions.\

Hitherto I could not have envisaged a bad version of Carmen. But this is it.

I have been writing about the arts in newspapers and magazines in the U. S. and Europe since the mid 1970s (starting as the dance reviewer for Chicago's The Reader newspaper. This film is a major artistic achievement. I guess if you are in the habit of watching American thrillers, horror movies and superhero drek, the film will seem slow to you. But this is a fine example of a harmonious mixture of beautiful choreography, intelligent narrative, effective and intriguing music and exquisite cinematography. A film like this doesn't come along very often, maybe once in five years. Have a glass of a fine mezcal, some good tobacco and sit back to let this film engage your soul..

It uses the short story of Prosper Merimee, the opera by Georges Bizet as pretext for an impressive show.

This is the first feeling seeing it and it is not just wrong; only not enough.

It is a large puzzle the border immigration, the old myths, music and, especialy dance, the lights are used almost with volupty.

Nice job of Melissa Barrera, fair work of Paul Mescal ( one of main motives, for me, to see the film ) and useful performance of Rossy de Palma.

A provocative remind of essential pieces defining life, from tradition, love, freedom to sacrifice offering staight to each of them.

The sin - the powerful feeling , to the second part of it, to be only an inconsistent improvisation, the dialogue using, too easy, pathetic cliches, the dance being the only matter thing, the sensation to see a puzzle with pieces from many others.

In essence, for me, entire film can be reduced at the dance of Marina Tamayo, reminding more Garcia Lorca than Prosper Merimee or Georges Bizet. For this dance, indeed, Carmen deserves to be seen. So, a two hours ( almost ) film being just beautiful for only three minutes. And this is all.

I did not know much about this film before I went but I hoped it may be like the Saura Carmen which was largely flamenco, paralleling the Carmen story and was terrific. As well as cinema, I enjoy flamenco, some modern dance and opera. Well, there was some good flamenco at the start by the mother but not much more. The dance was then sort of modern ballet like a young girl might do, waving their arms around, not particularly engaging or exciting. This is Carmen! I was more impressed by the choreography in Barbie (unexpected). Matter of taste maybe.

I gather the story was modelled more on Carmen Jones than the opera. There were some symbolic moments; washing of feet - refugees- but even they were not very emotive. The whole thing should have excited more than it did. Mescal and Miss Barrera were ok, but not much to work with given the uninspiring dialogue. It may have been somewhat "stylized" and that does not always work for me. Paul is a talented actor but needs better scripts than he has recently received (this & Aftersun). I woke up at one stage thinking I was in an Almodovar as the redoubtable Rossy de Palma peered down from the screen, but even she could not save this. I agree, disappointing.

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.

"Carmen" is a film based on the opera of the same name and whose script is masterfully adapted to the current era. Carmen must leave her native Mexico to escape some criminals and illegally crosses the border into the United States, meeting a racist subject and another with a lot of humanity. Aidan is the young man full of humanity who understands between justice and injustice and becomes the model of the liberal American who gives Carmen security. The theme of the problem of traffickers in the border cities of Mexico and the racism of closed-minded US border cities is well achieved, giving the characters of Carmen and Aidan the best of both countries, in addition the script touches elements of magical realism that manage to stand out. The cinematography full of chiaroscuro is a visual delight, the choreographies together with the songs are tremendous. For her part, Melissa Barrera plays Carmen with passion, demonstrating once again that in addition to being a scream queen, she is prepared for deep dramas, she also dances and sings beautifully. Paul Mescal is extraordinary as Aidan, showing his acting talent and Rossy de Palma is fabulous in her performance. A wonderful film that demonstrates the beauty of art cinema.

Benjamin Millepied is a Filmaker. The three lead characters are fabulous. Melissa Barrera, she can sing, she can dance and she's able to embody a character. Paul mescal in a different kind of character we used to know him : a TOUGH guy (soldier)... I'm glad a director was visionnary enough, to explore the captivating charisma of Rossy de Palma. The dance sequences are fascinating, i love seeing the differents slow-motion used during the whole movie to bring a unique tone to this picture... Marvelous i am pleasantly surprised, and for the future i want to see more pictures signed by Benjamin Millepied.

Kudos to Benjamin Millepied for a stunning directorial debut. The cinematography was poignant. The dancing was arresting and wove the storyline together incredibly well. It is a very artistic and well crafted reimagining of Georges Bizet's 19th-century opera "Carmen. I loved that the score was entirely original. I loved that the storyline was contemporary and felt very timely. This is not a simple retelling...it is taking the essence of "Carmen" and transforming it into something exceptional and relevant for our times.

If you are used to American movies that rely on fast, action packed sequences, lots of quick and often pithy dialogue and a plot that moves fast...(sensing a theme here?) then you may find this film slow and dare I say, boring. Nuanced and layered themes are probably not your "thing". Please just do us a favor and keep your review to yourself. A film like this is a rare diamond in a sea of cheap plastic knock-offs and deserves to shine.