Carmen

This is one of the best films we watched in my high school Spanish class. If you are a fan of the opera, this film will strongly entertain you. Of course, the dancing is wonderful. Watching these amazing dancers moving to the music of Bizet is well worth checking out.

This is an amazing film, both for the incredibly energy evoked from the frenetic flamenco dancing, and from the unique way that the filmmakers interweave the story of the stage production with the lives of the characters preparing for it. Spellbinding is the only word I can use to describe the experience. This is not 'Bizet's Carmen' by any usual standard. This is not a usual film by any standard. Every nuanced glance, every stomp of the foot, every piece of the music is intertwined so captivatingly that you can't take your eyes off the screen. You don't need to love opera or flamenco(I don't)to be captured, enraptured, enthralled by this film. Subtle and direct; loud and still; One of, if not the best, movies of it's kind, because there are so few like it.

While rehearing Carmen of Bizet, the middle-aged choreographer Antonio (Antonio Gades) brings the sexy Carmen (Laura del Sol) to perform the lead role. Antonio falls in love for Carmen, who is an independent and seductive woman incapable to accept a possessive love. When Carmen has an affair with another dancer, Antonio is consumed by his jealousy like D. José in the original opera, entwining fiction with reality.

"Carmen" is another great movie of Carlos Saura's trilogy dedicated to the Flamenco dance. The dramatic love story is developed with the lives of the artists entwined with the characters they are rehearsing, and many times is not absolutely clear whether what is happening is reality (with the dancers) or fiction (of the play). Paco de Lucia is another attraction of this original version of the famous Bizet's opera, which is based on the novel of Prosper Mérimée. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Carmen"

Carmen is one of the best films I've ever seen. It's hard to say whose performance is best: Antonio Gades, Cristina Hoyos and Laura del Sol are superb.They dance their souls out. It's a beautiful tale of inseparability of life and myth; myth penetrates everyday life. Dance becomes life and entire life is danced out. Real people at one and the same time live their own lives and become somebody else, act out the parts of lovers of old. The magic is continuing.

This is a wonderful film! Full of passion, music and drama. It follows the story of the opera of the same name. Even Carmen-haters will agree that this is a version that overcomes the boredom bred of familiarity and infuses new life into this overproduced work.

The setting is a flamenco school in Spain, and the search is on for the star of a production of a flamenco Carmen. The director finds, and then falls in love with his new leading lady. The complications arise from there, from some unhappiness on the part of the best dancer in the troupe who feels she should be the star and not the newcomer, and from the storyline of the opera.

The director of the film is the real-life director of one of the most famous dance schools in Spain, and the dancers, except for the character of Carmen, are members of the school.

The dancing is exciting and dangerous, the story, though very familiar, attains fresh vigor in the new setting, and is altogether one of the best films of the eighties.