It has been a full eight months since I first set eyes on “Carmen.” I can’t wait to see her again, when the film opens at The Flicks in Boise, Friday May 19. For me, my introduction to this 21st century “Carmen” was at the Toronto International Film Festival, where I’ve been blessed to have witnessed a long list of debut films from who would become some of the world’s best contemporary filmmakers — Alfonso Cuaron, Barry Jenkins, Yorgos Lanthimos, Steve McQueen, Christopher Nolan and Jean-Marc Vallee all brought their first feature efforts to TIFF. And I’m thrilled to report that another new director has stepped into that rare spotlight: Benjamin Millepied. Not that Millepied doesn’t know a thing or two about spotlights; he has been a soloist with the New York City Ballet and Director of Dance at the Paris Opera Ballet. More recently, he has choreographed integral scenes for the new “Dune” saga and, in 2010, “Black Swan,” where he met his now-spouse Natalie Portman.
“It is my great honor to be introducing you to the first film of Benjamin Millepied,” Dorota Lech, one of TIFF’s lead programmers told first-nighters last September. “You are the very first audience in the world to see this film.”
The following morning, with the once-in-a-lifetime experience of an audience cheering a debut film still echoing in his head and heart, Millepied talked a bit about how “Carmen” was the “opera of my childhood.”
“I had a profound desire to reinvent ‘Carmen,’ to breathe new life, and a fresh and contemporary perspective into her story. To that end, my movie is not a re-telling or adaptation of ‘Carmen,’ but an entirely new and unique artistic endeavor.”
This is far from Carmen’s first dance. In the 1950s, no less than Oscar Hammerstein put new lyrics to Americanize what would become “Carmen Jones,” co-starring Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey and the recently departed and forever missed Harry Belafonte. Even MTV gave her a twirl with Beyonce as Carmen in what was billed as “a Hip Hopera” in 2002.
In this new, modern dance inspiration, Carmen is a young and fiercely independent woman, forced to flee her home in the Mexican desert following the brutal murder of her mother. Carmen (Melissa Barrera) survives a terrifying and dangerous illegal border crossing into the U.S., only to be confronted by a lawless volunteer border “guard,” who cold-bloodedly murders two other immigrants in her group. When the murderer and an American Mariner, Aidan (the white hot and recent Oscar nominee Paul Mescal) become embroiled in a deadly standoff, Carmen and Aidan escape together. They make their way to Los Angeles in search of Carmen’s mother’s best friend and owner of a nightclub (a mercurial Rossy De Palma). The club becomes a cinematic device of sanctuary but also a showcase of heartbreakingly beautiful music and dance. Carmen and Aidan find temporary solace in the magical refuge, but their time is running out as a police hunt closes in. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it again.
“I wanted to make a movie that is an immersive experience, one that demanded I experiment with movement, music and dance in a way that I had never known,” Millepied said at TIFF. “On stage, dance, music, light, costumes … they all come together as a single experience, where none of the elements should conflict with one another, but rather coexist as a coherent work of art. Honestly, I approached this re-imagining of Carmen in the same way as I approach dance … a language of dreams. But I also had to navigate between those dreams and reality, the mystical and the earthly. My conscious and subconscious.”
As exciting as this new discovery is, I must also offer a stern warning: this is not the Carmen of your youth, or your parents, their parents, or their parents. This is not just a “re-imagining” as Millepied coined it. Yes, it’s an exploration of a familiar theme but with dramatically different thematics. And it is never derivative. It has its own grammar, if you will.
To find the perfect Carmen, Millipied said he looked at thousands of video auditions. Ironically, he discovered Melissa Barrera on a Mexican reality competition TV show. “Even though she had never taken dance lessons, I was struck by her natural instinct for dance,” said Millipied.
In approaching this new Carmen, I implore you not to be taken aback by the paucity of Bizet’s original score. In fact, you should know something that I learned only recently: Carmen did not begin as Bizet’s opera. French writer Prosper Merimee first penned the tragic tale in 1845. And it would be decades later when Bizet tacked on the score that we all know today. Indeed, it has been a score that many productions — on stage and screen — have not been able to escape.
