The Carmen Film - A Big, Mostly Successful Swing

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 A retelling of the classical opera "Carmen", but moving the setting to present day California and having the romance be between a U.S. border patrol agent and a Mexican immigrant, was always going to be the least marketable idea for a movie one could possibly have. Given that, I'm happy that the money people decided to go all the way in on, "what if Bob Fossee made La La Land about the border wall?" This is the first film from choreographer Benjamin Millepied, and you can tell, because this is a ~dance~ musical. There are multiple long dance breaks in the film. I loved "Carmen". I probably loved the ambition more than I loved what was on the screen, but I did love it. 

 For a musical, there are few original songs. "Succession" composer Nicholas Britell crafted a lovely score for it, and that score spends a lot of time driving the film. Melissa Barrera of "Scream" fame is the Mexican woman, forced to run away from her home. Paul Mescal, who seems to be the current hottest thing in Hollywood, is the reluctant military man. The specifics of these backstories are not very impressive - it's not clear why exactly men are chasing her, his PTSD is not explored in any compelling fashion - but they barely talk, so that's not important. The choreography is the main attraction here. I don't know why Carmen's mom is being executed by a gang, but I understand the defiant dance she gives before being shot. Barrera gives probably her best performance as a flirty free-spirit, expressed entirely through her movements. No matter how inane some of her dialogue is, her cabaret performances get the point across. Mescal doesn't get asked to do nearly as much for the most part, but a climactic boxing scene is brilliantly staged around a crowd of dancers circling. 

 Do I think that "Carmen" has any appeal to someone who isn't on board with the concept of the opera Carmen as a dance-focused musical adapted to current events? Absolutely not. Nearly every line of dialogue here is purely functional, to explain how characters got from point A to point B. This brings two issues: we never really see the romance develop to the "I would die for you" stage, and the movie is meaningless as commentary on whatever real-world issues it thinks it's tackling. Chunks of the film's second half feel overly indebted to Fosse's "Cabaret", but "Carmen" doesn't have an ounce of the thematic depth that Fosse showed in analyzing escapism and fascism. Lucky for Millepied, I am on board with this direction, and I was a big fan of how it turned out. 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

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