Review: Modern take on 'Carmen' is a tale of lovers on the run that really moves when its leads are dancing

Dancer-turned-director Benjamin Millepied’s debut feature, “Carmen,” is an experimental mix of dance, music and drama — but one wishes in places that it was even more experimental, throwing narrative conventions to the wind and just luxuriating in the dance.

The title suggests a connection to Georges Bizet’s sultry opera, “Carmen,” and there are oblique references to that classic story of a Roma woman who can’t be held down by one man. But, overall, the screenplay — by Loïc Barrere and Alexander Dinelaris — goes its own way to find a story of desperation and romance along the U.S./Mexico border.

On the Mexican side, a young woman named Carmen (played by Melissa Barrera) is on the run from the druglords who killed her mother, Zilah (Marina Tamayo). The movie’s stirring first images are of Zilah, dancing without music, tapping in defiance at the men who eventually kill her.

Carmen arranges an illegal border crossing into New Mexico, which is how she encounters Aidan (Paul Mescal). He’s a former Marine, working as a volunteer sentinel for the Border Patrol, paired with a racist jerk, Mike (Benedict Hardie), who is too eager to hunt down Mexicans. When Mike starts shooting migrants and threatens to kill Carmen, Aidan shoots Mike dead. Now the two strangers are bonded in blood, both knowing the outcome if the law catches up to them.

Aidan helps Carmen get to Los Angeles, to a club owned by Zilah’s childhood friend, Masilda. She’s played by Rossy de Palma, the longtime collaborator of Pedro Almodóvar and a force of nature on the screen. Masilda knows that Carmen, like her mother, is a dancer — and it’s through dance that Carmen will show her true self. It’s also in the dance that Carmen and Aidan start to fall in love.

Millepied, who also choreographed the dance sequences, which are the one part of “Carmen” that’s untethered to the conventions of a lovers-on-the-run narrative. Mescal, fresh off his Oscar nomination for “Aftersun,” isn’t a great dancer, but Barrera is amazing to watch. (A reminder: Barrera, known to many from the last couple of “Scream” movies,” showed her dancing and singing skills in “In the Heights,” as Vanessa, the ambitious fashion designer and love interest of the lead character, Usnavi.)

There are moments when one wishes that Millepied (who may be better known as Natalie Portman’s husband and red carpet arm candy) had tossed the script and just gone full-tilt into the dancing. The expressiveness and emotion he gets in those scenes overwhelm everything else in “Carmen,” and at a certain point even Millepied would have been better served by giving in to the rhythm. 

——

‘Carmen’

★★★

Opens Friday, May 19, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language, some violence and nudity. Running time: 117 minutes.