Barrera, Mescal are red-hot in ‘Carmen’
“Carmen” does not have a traditional narrative. Instead, the story is told through a dazzling combination of music, dance, and imagery. Its director, Benjamin Millepied, is a renowned choreographer who runs his actors through a gauntlet of styles from flamenco to ballet.
Loosely based on Georges Bizet’s eponymous opera, this film revels in stylistic excesses that are always creative and often exhilarating. For example, a boxing match turns into an impromptu rap number featuring dancers crunking between the fighters, while the referee (Tracy “The DOC” Curry) spits bars. The camera moves among the dancers, weaving in and out of the action while giving us a full view of the kinetic bodies onscreen.
As expected with any adaptation of “Carmen,” the color red figures prominently. It’s in the stained-glass rose in the front door of a home surrounded by cops, the opening-credits lettering, and the blouse of Carmen (Melissa Barrera from “In the Heights”). Red signals danger, rebellion, and lust, three things for which Carmen is known. Not for nothing did Bizet open Carmen’s famous “Habanera” with the line “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.” (Love is rebellious bird.)
Millepied opens his “Carmen” with Carmen’s mother, Zilah (Marina Tamayo), defiantly staring down a gunman while flamenco dancing on a wooden board in the Mexican desert. As the threat heightens, her steps become fiercer. The scene culminates in shocking gunfire.
With her dying breath, Zilah tells her daughter to escape to Los Angeles to seek out her honorary aunt, Masilda (Rossy de Palma). “If you are my heart, she is my spine,” Zilah says. They ran a nightclub where they sang and danced. This club will be the setting of several musical numbers, some of which are co-written by the actors, lyricists Taura Stinson and Julieta Venegas, and the film’s score composer, Nicholas Britell.
Before she can get to L.A. (and after she smears her mother’s blood on her forehead in a symbolic nod to war paint), Carmen has to cross the Mexican border. Here, she encounters trigger-happy racist border guards who gun down several people in her group. She is saved from that fate by Aidan (Paul Mescal), a Marine fresh from Afghanistan whose buddy, Mike (Benedict Hardie), takes him on border patrol. When Mike tries to kill Carmen, Aidan guns him down, becoming a fugitive.
Aidan and Carmen go on the run, falling for each other in the process. One of the bigger surprises is how important Masilda is in this tragic love story. De Palma, a favorite of director Pedro Almodóvar, remains one of the most striking and interesting actors in cinema. Her role involves a rich mix of musical numbers, striking costumes, and ripe emotions. Her nails and makeup are spectacular, too. In one scene, she has eyes painted on her eyelids.
With “Carmen,” Mescal continues his ascent after his Oscarnominated turn in “Aftersun.” He never oversells Aidan’s war trauma, and he’s a really good singer. Barrera is an even better singer and dancer (Aidan’s imperfect moves opposite Carmen’s balletic grace makes sense for his character). An impromptu dance with de Palma becomes an expression of loss that hits you right in the gut.
As good as the performers are, “Carmen” belongs to the folks behind the camera. Britell’s score is brilliant even by his standards (he wrote the music for “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” not to mention the theme to TV’s “Succession”). Filled with angelic choirs and insistent strings, this film should net him his fourth Oscar nomination.
“Carmen”’s gorgeous look is courtesy of Jörg Widmer, who reminds us with his visuals that he’s worked with Terrence Malick on two films. The images here are striking, though I doubt Malick would have let any of his actors urinate in his trademark waving fields of wheat.
Tying all this together is editor Dany Cooper, who makes the visual storytelling of “Carmen” feel natural and easy to follow. The experimental nature Millepied is going for here is well-defined by Cooper’s work.
Admittedly, “Carmen” is an acquired taste. But if you’re in the mood for something that will stun your senses, I highly recommended it.