Transposing a great classic of 19th-century French literature and opera into contemporary America: this is the program of Benjamin Millepied’s first film. And what better way to launch the film career of the former director of dance at the Paris Opera than with a film adaptation of Carmen?
Prosper Mérimée’s novel had already been adapted several times for the cinema – there have been nearly thirty films since 1907 – and we particularly remember Jean-Luc Godard’s free reinterpretation of it in 1983 with Prénom Carmen. With Millepied, however, we are far from the somewhat hermetic sobriety of the author of the New Wave.
It is rather on the side of Georges Bizet’s famous comic opera that one must look for the reference, because this Carmen is a musical drama, sung and especially danced. The filmmaker makes Carmen (played by the revelation of the last Scream, Melissa Barrera) a young Mexican girl who tries to cross the border to the United States, and transforms Don José into Aidan, an ex-marine who saves her life.
Exit Andalusia, welcome to deep America, on the road to Los Angeles, where the former dancer turned director-choreographer lives and where he founded his company, L.A. Dance Project.
Of course, this is not the first modern retelling of the classic – we remember Calixto Bieito’s staging, performed several times at the Paris Opera, where sopranos and tenors sang in a parking lot setting filled with old Mercedes C-Classes.
But Millepied goes further in the adaptation: Bizet’s music gives way to folk ballads played on guitar by the male lead, Paul Mescal (Aftersun), and to an original score by Nicholas Britell – to whom we owe the haunting theme music of the Succession series.
Benjamin Millepied is known to be a film lover. In 2015, he created choreography for the Cannes Film Festival inspired by a famous scene from Hitchcock’s Death at the Brink. His big cinematic revelation may have been his experience choreographing the dance scenes for Darren Aronovsky’s Black Swan in 2010, a shoot on which he met his wife, actress Natalie Portman. For the former dancer of the New York City Ballet, the transition to the cinema seems natural, and the project – produced by the producer of The Three Musketeers, Dimitri Rassam – is ambitious. Verdict on the screens from June 14.
Carmen
Release date: June 14