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My FILM review for
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Carmen
Carlos Saura (1983)
Antonio's
dance company are putting on a flamenco interpretation of
Bizet's famous opera,
Carmen. However, finding a woman
capable of playing the lead role is something of a challenge. There are
many dancers who are very talented, but Antonio needs a dancer full of
passion and spirit, in short he needs a Carmen.
We shouldn't
put down to coincidence that her name is in fact Carmen, she does as it
turns out embody all the characteristics of the fictional Carmen and
this combination of the fictive and the real, the passions that
transgress the bounds of the production within the production, is the
crux of the interest in this film.
However, ideas
aside, this film is a masterful creation. Carlos Saura is fascinated by
the world of flamenco and here we are shown some incredible dancing,
from workshop scenes through to scenes of the finished production,
including the knife fighting scenes accompanied with all the passion and
grace you would expect of flamenco.
This film
appeals on many levels, through the story of love, the display of
wonderful dancing and the intrigue of the mixture between fiction and
reality, making it a fantastic introduction to the films of Carlos Saura,
a rightfully acclaimed Spanish film director.
This review is a contribution to the
Spanish Word-A-Day written by Christopher Champion from Oxford.
Note: You support Spanish-Word-A-Day
if you click on any of the links and buy anything you want at Amazon.
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