Travis Johnson compares the directorial debut of choreographer Benjamin Millepied to an “alienated teen’s poetry”. Let’s just say that Carmen doesn’t stack up against the legendary opera it’s barely based on.
Carmen (2023)
When is an adaptation not an adaptation? Perhaps when having so little in common with the source material leaves it completely unrecognisable. Such is the case with dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s take on Georges Bizet’s legendary opera Carmen, itself drawn from Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 novella of the same title. Opera fans will not be happy with the liberties Millepied has taken with the material. And those with a taste for more provocative and iconoclastic fare? Sadly, they’re out of luck too.
Ditching the original Spanish setting for the US/Mexico border, Millipied’s Carmen is a lovers-on-the-lam tale, following the titular dancer (Melissa Barrera of In the Heights) as she flees north after the murder of her mother, seeking refuge in a bar owned by Masilda (Rossy de Palma).
A chance encounter with a vigilante border patrol results in one dead redneck (Benedict Hardie) and sensitive hunk Aidan (Paul Mescal) joining her on the road. Passion is quickly ignited between the pair, but their recent and violent past is quickly catching up with them.
Or, actually, not so quickly. Carmen is a slog. Ostensibly a dance movie, it’s really instead a turgid mood piece, all longing looks and still tableaux set against the sun-burnished desert (South Australia standing in for California, but always looking like South Australia). The story, already thin enough, is doled out in risible, melodramatic dialogue scenes of interminable length and minimal impact. The overall aesthetic is fine, occasionally touching on Lynchian surrealism in places. But all this studied, neon-drenched moodiness conceals a hollow heart; no blood pumps through the film’s veins.
Barrera and Mescal do what they can, but there’s not much that can be achieved with the material at hand. What could have been a classic story reinterpreted through dance is instead a leaden drama interspersed with the occasional dance sequence. Millipied may well be a talented choreographer, but his directing chops are lacking, the Black Swan veteran frequently employing cuts and close-ups that disrupt the flow and rhythm of the musical scenes. This problem could have been overcome by simply setting his cameras back and letting us actually see what his performers are doing. As such, the central draw of the film, its raison d’etre, is rendered impotent.
Not every musical needs that anarchic Baz Luhrmann energy, but the listless Carmen is in desperate need of some brio, some chutzpah, something to make us sit forward in our seats. Something to make us care about these people and their situation, or at least to engage with the ostensible spectacle on screen. But Millipied’s film seems to wilfully eschew such things. It’s laughably self-serious, earnestly convinced of its own profundity but keeping its cards close to its chest, refusing to explicate any themes it might be trying to explore. It’s an arthouse film, of course: a category that contains its fair share of the oblique and opaque. But what Carmen lacks is the ability to intrigue the viewer; to make us want to look below the surface and puzzle out its narrative language.
The film is all surface, as thin as the skin on cold soup. As eye candy, Carmen just about passes muster, thanks to some interesting production design and cinematography coupled with the photogenic Barrera and Mescal. But as both drama and dance this is a thoroughly sophomoric effort, as deep as an alienated teen’s poetry, and just as cringeworthy.
