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Opera lovers flock to performances in order to be thrilled, aroused, overjoyed, moved to tears. Ditto disciples of dance, musical-theater fanatics, and — the worst, most masochistic, and unrepentant art-rush addicts of them all — moviegoers. Georges Bizet’s Carmen shocked audiences when it premiered in 1875 in Paris; eventually, his story of a Spanish soldier and a Roma traveler would become a staple of repertory companies and one of the best-known operas of all time. (Hum the opening notes of this, and at least one person will break into their best Beverly Sills impression.) More people know this version better than its literary source material, with the ballets based on Bizet’s tragedy securing second place. Francesco Rosi, Carlos Saura, MTV, and Jean-Luc Godard (kind of) took stabs at film versions. So did Otto Preminger, Harry Belafonte, and Dorothy Dandridge.
Director-choreographer Benjamin Millepied now takes his shot at the warhorse, nixing the operatics themselves and just keeping the over-the-top, hyperventilating tone of Bizet’s doomed romance. Instead of a Spaniard, we get Aidan (Paul Mescal), a U.S. Marine back from two tours of Afghanistan and living with his sister in southern Texas. Rather than a wild-eyed femme fatale, the film opts for a Carmen (Melissa Barrera) who’s a Mexican immigrant heading north after her mother’s murder. There is singing, just not the glass-shattering-high-note kind. And given the Black Swan dance coordinator’s bona fides in the ballet world, Millepied has added in a perverse amount of pas de deux, as well as flamenco numbers, street-dance showcases, and Broadway-style showstoppers. It’s ambitious, for sure.
So why does this all feel so shallow, so overly stylized? Why does the riot of tones add up to nothing but a cacophony of claps, thumps, shrugs, and heavy breathing? How, despite the best efforts of two magnetic leads and a lot of talent behind the camera, have we ended up with little more than a Carmen that’s less a tear-jerker and more like the horniest perfume ad to ever feature an Oscar nominee under the age of 30?
If any of the opera’s swooning, lung-testing arias are here somewhere, then composer Nicholas Britell (Succession) has buried them deep within the score’s melodies, mixes, and ensemble choir pieces. Millepied has worked with a trio of screenwriters — Loïc Barrere, Alexander Dinelaris, and Lisa Loomer — to craft something that merely uses the bare bones of Prosper Mérrimée’s novella and Alexander Pushkin’s poem “The Gypsies” (both of which are credited, whereas the opera isn’t) as starting points. It’s hard not to wonder if he assigned each of them a strand: OK, you handle the heavy-handed commentary about America’s immigration policies and piss-poor treatment of veterans; you give Almodóvar MVP Rossy de Palma, rocking her Cubist beauty like nobody’s business, some goofy dialogue about fate; and you work on the underdeveloped bits involving an El Paso cop who’s “chasing” them and a skeezy guy hitting on Carmen. As for the sprinkling of Tex-Mex Catholic kitsch à la Romeo and Juliet (the Luhrmann-lite vibe is strong with this one) and the krumping fight club run by a raspy-rapping Tracy “the D.O.C.” Curry (!), don’t worry: We have that covered.
It isn’t surprising that the dance numbers are the strongest sequences here, especially when cinematographer Jörg Widmer starts whipping the camera around. Yet what this version really adds to the legacy of this star-crossed-lovers story are a pair of movie stars. You can’t underestimate the sheer pleasure of watching two extremely photogenic people fall head over heels for each other, and Millepied’s homage-revisionist retelling is practically an exhibit of white-hot screen heat. We’ve already established that Barrera has moves (see In the Heights) and Mescal is the second coming of sensitive Brando-esque masculinity — Aidan’s favorite pastimes are brooding and singing guitar-strummed dirges, and not in that order. But we’ll put it this way: Should you care to dig into a contemporary interpretation of a centuries-old canon work, you can skip this Carmen. If you feel the need to watch a sweaty sex symbol pound a punching bag while shirtless, we have a movie just for you.
