Screened as part of NZIFF 2023

Carmen 2022

Directed by Benjamin Millepied

Sensual and simmering with tension, Black Swan and Dune choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s debut feature reimagines classic opera Carmen for the modern era, a musical drama set in the hotbed of the America–Mexico border.

Australia In English and Spanish with English subtitles
116 minutes Colour / DCP

Rent

Director, Choreography

Producers

Dimitri Rassam
,
Rosemary Blight

Screenplay

Benjamin Millepied
,
Alex Dinelaris
,
Loïc Barrère

Cinematography

Joerg Widmer

Editor

Dany Cooper

Production Designer

Steven Jones-Evans

Costume Designer

Emily Seresin

Music

Nicholas Brittel

Cast

Melissa Barrera
,
Paul Mescal
,
Rossy De Palma
,
Tracy “The D.O.C.” Curry
,
Benedict Hardie

Festivals

Toronto 2022; Sydney 2023

Elsewhere

Presented in association with

Viva

Major up-and-coming stars Paul Mescal (Oscar-nominee for Aftersun, NZIFF 2022) and Melissa Berrera (a highlight of Lin Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights) play star-crossed lovers from different sides of the US-Mexico border in the debut feature of choreographer Benjamin Millepied.

Carmen (Berrera) is a steely young woman fleeing gang violence in the Mexican desert. Aidan (Mescal) is the moody and wayward ex-Marine who rescues her from the clutches of a violent American militia hunting illegal immigrants. On the run, the two fall into a steamy love affair as they try to make their way to Los Angeles. Millepied conjures fierce performances from his two stars, who showcase their musical and dancing talents amidst a sweltering, tense drama that daringly reimagines Bizet’s tragic opera of the same name. Nicholas Brittell, composer of Succession and Moonlight fame, punctures the film with his emphatic and, yes, operatic score.

Shot in the Australian outback, the film features stunning photography from cinematographer Jörg Widmer, recalling modern desert classics like No Country for Old Men and Birds of Passage (NZIFF 2018). Millepied’s talent with rhythm and movement is well suited for frequent sequences of song and dance, but he proves to be a talent in the art of capturing a story in striking, well-defined imagery as well, frequently luring the viewer into well-mounted, dreamlike moments of abstraction.

The film has the feel of a passionate first-timer blazing their own path away from genre conventions. It is a musical with only a few, memorable, songs; it is a dance movie which wields its choreography as stylistic interludes from the action of the drama; it is an adaptation that cares little for fealty to the original text, for the better. Though this Carmen ultimately bears little resemblance to the specifics of Bizet’s masterwork, it remains a smouldering, tragic tale of passion that is guaranteed to leave its mark on audiences. — Tom Augustine