First Name: Carmen (1983)

Thanks for the memories!

So much average

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Carmen is a part of a terrorist group. Her uncle Jeannot (Godard) lends her his seaside apartment. Carmen and her group try to rob a bank. She gets tangled up and falls in love with security guard Joseph. She escapes with Joseph handcuffed to her back to uncle Jeannot's apartment.This is not an action thriller. It has some surreal touches. The most striking thing is the explicit sexual content in this movie by director Jean-Luc Godard. It's done without sexuality. It's Joseph forcing his masturbation on Carmen in the shower. It's not the most compelling thriller. It's also not surrealistic enough to be interesting. It has a lot of different elements. Some work better than others.

I found it very interesting to see a new, different movie made out of an old story (Carmen). It is not easy to follow Godard and hence it may take several views of the films to understand all details including plot, dialogues and philosophical remarks and the result is it makes you reflect about it and makes you become an actively involved viewer. A Godard movie is like modern art introducing new standards in story telling, and so for someone used to and expecting a scheme F Hollywood entertainment movie it is probably a frustrating experience. I found the actors did a good job. I think the nakedness of the lead actress relates to the kind of relationship she (Carmen) has with her lover, which is based on a strong sexual, magnetic and obsessive attraction. I found the cinematographic/photographic work of the movie very beautiful and the music fits nicely in.

Cutting to the chase I can't imagine many viewers actually enjoying "First Name: Carmen". It is an ugly film with uninteresting sets, muddy documentary-style color, and silly to boring acting. Maruschka Detmers is on screen most of the time, often involved in the most non-erotic erotic scenes this side of "Bloody Mama"- shave those eyebrows baby!I kept feeling that I had seen this film somewhere before and finally I realized that I had it confused with another film. But this confusion illustrated how the extremes of the "film style continuum" actually meet and form a circle. And to my surprise Godard's new-wave creation closes this circle by linking up with the movie I kept being reminded of: Hillary Duff's "A Cinderella Story"; although they come at their more moronic qualities from opposite directions. Godard manages to purge Bizet's "Carmen" of all its beauty, energy, and suspense. Duff's adaptation of "Cinderella" succeeds in purging all the beauty, charm, and suspense from the classic "Cinderella". Both films star equally tired and vaguely repellent actresses, the slug-like Duff and the "I have hair in more places than Josh Harnett" Maruschka Detmers.They have virtually identical plots: Carmen wants to make a film-Sam (Duff) wants to attend Princeton, but neither has the money. Carmen attempts a bank robbery but is foiled by a guard-Sam applies for a Princeton scholarship but is foiled by her wicked stepmother (played by Stiffler's mom). Carmen meets Joseph during the robbery and they flee to her uncle's apartment barely avoiding capture-Sam connects with her anonymous cyber soul mate at the Halloween dance and flees to her fry-cook job just in time to avoid being caught. Carmen goes to a luxury hotel where they stage a film as a pretext for kidnapping a guest-Sam goes to a pep rally where the cheerleaders stage a play as a pretext for disclosing her identity and breaking up her budding romance. Carmen's kidnapping caper is foiled by the police-Sam's evil stepmother's inheritance scheme is foiled by the discovery of a secret will. Carmen goes out mumbling some expressionistic stuff to the bellboy-Sam's new boyfriend chooses Princeton over USC.Godard became famous by ignoring the established conventions of narrative, communicating visually in an ugly documentary style, and spending very little money during the production phase of his projects. The problem with his approach is that very few real and potential viewers can even hope to connect enough for these personal political essays to communicate anything. Duff's film's are too shallow to communicate anything substantial but they do connect to their audience of pre-teen viewers. As for "Carmen", run out and find me a pre-teen to explain the film to me, I can't make head or tail out of it.

First Name: Carmen is an enthralling hybrid for director/actor Jean-Luc Godard and screenwriter (and frequent collaborator) Anne-Marie Mieville. After almost a decade of weird, philosophical experimentation, they took on the opera of Carmen (the original story of which, unfortunately, I am not very knowledgeable of) and deconstructed it with some amusing self-awareness ("Uncle" Jean-Luc Godard at the start of the film is in a hospital of sorts, over-staying his welcome), while going back to Godard's olden days of movies with lovers on the run. This time the lovers meet by accident and chance- Carmen X (the alluring and dangerous Maruschka Detmers in a controlled, if downtrodden debut acting role) asks of her uncle Jean if she can use his beach-side house to make a film with some friends. He agrees, though not knowing she's apart of a terrorist gang that robs a bank. During the robbery she has a shoot-out, and kiss, with Joseph (Jacques Bonnaffe, whose performance shifts from bizarre to intense and then believable) the security guard. They hide out for a little while, becoming more involved, while Carmen knows at the same time his uncle prepares to make his comeback film after being washed up for so long, her terrorist friends are planning another scheme.The acting ranges from forceful to observant, from a little boring to a little ridiculous, but like in Godard's 60's films the actors contribute to Godard's documentary style feel (of which he calls a documentary which is 'fictional'). And Godard is able to get a few laughs during his few scenes on camera, even as he spouts a few quotes that make a viewer dig in their minds for a meaning. Accompanied with evocative and sweet late-night shots of cars and a train in Paris, are shots of the ocean, which contributes as the film's main flaw for me (I kept on saying, yeah the sea looks nice, but what's the point he's getting at here- is it the characters or himself that likes staring at the sea?). Nevertheless, the compositions are no less than on par with what to be expected from Godard (via the great Raoul Coutard and Jean-Bernard Menoud), and the emotionally charged musical selections from Beethoven and Bizet to Tom Waits are pulled off as a successful, often emotional experiment as the footage of the string musicians are inserted several times. Overall, 'Carmen', however little or much it follows it's source, is a fine piece of art-type of cinema, where romanticism and cynical humor plays as much of a role as the story.