Carmen (2003)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The story of a young officer, who fall in sizzling love with a tobacco factory worker told so distant and leisurely cinematic language that comes to mind: perhaps the matter is the advanced age of the director, that did not allow him to make the main theme of the movie what was considered his numerous predecessors - passion, jealousy, lust.Senor Aranda actually deprived the most "Spanish" story in the history of the passions with which "Carmen" always associated. Despite the stunning views of Andalusia, Granada and Cordoba, against which the action is played out, watch what is happening on the screen simply uninteresting.The plot, which became the basis for operas, ballets and numerous adaptations, turns into a specific, interesting mainly with the cultural and visual perspectives movie. Atmosphere of the time recreated with care. In particular, to work on the costumes was invited "Oscar"-winner Yvon Blake. Obviously, the film with a similar scale, certainly deserves more serious cast. And if Paz Vega can be represented as Carmen, Antonio Deschamps is frankly not cope with the role, the duo looks extremely unconvincing. In general, the picture may be addressed to lovers of costume movies, hopeless romantics and those for whom the "Carmen" - is just a bouncy tune of Bizet's opera of the same name.+ Costume adaptation of classicThe lack of decent actors in the lead roles

There are several ways to misunderstand this movie and a couple of them have been shown in some of the past comments. This is a movie to be analyzed as a free recreation of a known subject and therefore not to be compared with the opera, the book or other Carmen movies seen before. It just stands for itself and I must say that this Carmen does it very well. It is a mistake to compare because that is the first step to deny movies the chance to be autonomous creative works of art. Vicente Aranda is a master of atmosphere and the art direction, the costumes and the photography are extremely well put together to achieve a pleasing aesthetic experience. Let's take it as it is.And that brings us to the next misunderstanding. Someone complains about the typical Spanish clichés in the movie. Well, historically the movie is extremely well researched and you can see the results of that very serious work in every scene. It is not only an accurate portrait of the "black Spain" of knife and espadrille that Goya portrayed so vividly, but it's also of that part of history as seen by a foreigner fascinated with the folkloric side of that society. Honestly, anyone who doesn't want to see any cliché about Spain shouldn't buy a ticket to see Carmen, but in this case those clichés are presented before they became one and the way to see them is getting rid of our own prejudices.Another important requirement to understand this movie properly is to speak the language. It is not acceptable to criticize any actor performance for not having understood his or her lines. If all the rest of the audience did, the problem most likely lies somewhere else. Paz Vega has an immaculate diction with her Andalusian accent and all she says is understandable and credible. Her Argentinian partner, Leonardo Sbaraglia, gives also a convincing portrait of the Basque officer that became a "bandolero", and her accent is very well learned.No less important is to have a minimally open approach to the material. To say that Paz Vega is "horrible" suggests that the author of the phrase entered the theater for the wrong reasons. We already had in Spain a critic in one of the most prestigious papers that used to recommend us pictures he found homosexually arousing, without mentioning it explicitly. And that was not totally fair for the rest of us, especially for the ones that hadn't detected that the man was writing with parts of his anatomy that many readers didn't necessarily had to care for. I'm not suggesting at all that the reviewer had the same motivation, but the expectations must have been different as the ones of those among us that went to see a talented and beautiful actress play an almost classic role, because that's what we got. Paz Vega IS Carmen, and an excellent one, in Vicente Aranda's movie.

Dull acting, weak script...worst spanish movie in years...I wasattracted by the (naked) beauty of Paz Vega, but as an actressshe's useless, you almost can't understand what she's saying...About the story there's not much coherent to say...we heard of itbefore, but as this is a "modern Carmen" we find a few changes: -The french soldier is now a basque soldier. -Merimee himself is a character in the story. -Carmen is a dangerous "bandolera" in love with a famous"matador" and she can speak fluent basque...Can anyone understand this mess?

This movie has been promoting in everywhere in Spain with a huge publicity campaign, after watching it, you realise that someone has stolen your money. Paz Vega is horrible as Carmen, she´s not natural at all and she looks like she´s making a fashion magazine cover in all the shots ("the best" is when she as an andalusian woman ...¡can speak basque and fluently¡, Leonardo Sbaraglia is much better than her as Jose, but the story is very slow, the plot don´t work, and the screenplay is really very very bad...I think Penelope Cruz (the film was written for her)would have been a much more credible and sexy Carmen.What a waste of time and money