chaos-rampant I'm not a fan of opera, I prefer a mobile eye, a shifting stage of appearances. So I expect those more versed than me to be able to mine this for more interesting insights in the story.I'm drawn here by two things primarily, looking for how they intersect. One is the dance, here wonderful flamenco. There's something silly when men dance it, but the women were a profound joy. There's none of the mannered formalism that you find in the European ballroom, here it's all stirred from explosive blood, urges push through and swirl on the dancing bodies. So this captivates purely for the expressive dance.The other is self-referential illumination on precisely this reality of the urges beneath the act. Dance isn't just bodies moving, though that's what we come to see. There's always something antecedent to it that animates the desire, in the original gypsy world of flamenco I suppose this was marginalization, poverty, lawlessness, it comes down to an anger, passion or pride that can't be reasoned and is let out in abstract shape. Here we have a flamenco staging about a flamenco staging of Carmen become animated by the same tumultuous passions in the opera. The inner Carmen story blurs in the outer Carmen which is about staging Carmen with a real passion, thus enlarging the stage to encompass the life that gives shape to it. So when Carmen and her rival in the troupe dance out their rivalry, or Carmen and her instructor dance out the seduction, we have a richer, more dangerous life than the opera or dance could afford.Saura had made another exercise prior to this and what looks like a few more, mixing dance with a story about the urges. It's smarter to notice than powerful to watch, because it's sparse and feels like a sketch. We see him perfect the co-mingling of story while figuring out the space.It all comes together with superb clarity in his Tango film.

MARIO GAUCI This is one of a number of Saura efforts celebrating various types of Latin dances (of which I own 5!), but only the first I have checked out. Nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar, it details the vicissitudes behind a flamenco dance company's staging of Georges Bizet's famous opera "Carmen" based on the Prosper Merimee' novel. For the record, I own as many as 9(!) adaptations of the source material – of which the 1920 (by Ernst Lubitsch), 1948 (Charles Vidor), 1954 (Otto Preminger), 1962 (Carmine Gallone) and 1984 (Francesco Rosi) are still unwatched.Needless to say, being no fan of either opera or dance, I can only stick with them when briefly incorporated into a movie narrative – or, as happens to be the case here, are presented in the manner of the tried-and-true "putting-on-a-show" formula. In that respect, it adheres to pretty much all of the established tropes of the sub-genre: the girl cast in the title role on the strength of her ideal temperament is a non-starter at first and, naturally, incurs the jealousy of the company's star attraction (past her prime and basically relegated to being a co-choreographer with the director/male lead, himself not so young anymore!); the latter, then, has a turbulent relationship with his new protégé (married to an estranged drug dealer just out of prison and an unrepentant wanton to boot!) – which threatens the production and, ultimately, brings about his personal downfall.Clearly the film's mainstay for the casual viewer is the way the plot line being 'dramatized' becomes mirrored in reality: apart from the male lead's afore-mentioned double-duty, rather unsubtly, the female protagonist shares her name with that of the character she is 'interpreting' – making this turn-of-events somewhat predictable. Having said that, the occasionally exhilarating dance sequences and the protagonists' charisma eventually save the day.

namdc 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.

hmsgroop 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.