This is the first film from writer/director Benjamin Millepied, a dancer and choreographer, and while it suffers from its lack of story, it’s an exciting debut effort and I look forward to seeing what he does next.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 11, 2024

Long and petulant, with little text, a visualization closer to a perfume ad than a film. [Full review in Spanish]

| Aug 6, 2024

A not so cool Carmen. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 2, 2024

Melissa Barrera dazzles as brilliantly as she does in Jon M. Chu’s In the Heights, and her chemistry with Paul Mescal delivers a deeply memorable romance.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 4, 2023

Opera fans will not be happy with the liberties Millepied has taken with the material. And those with a taste for more provocative and iconoclastic fare? Sadly, they’re out of luck too.

| Sep 21, 2023

Where Carmen really soars is in its translation of drama into dance. It’s an inspired move, pairing this almost mythical story with such a primal medium.

| Aug 25, 2023

CARMEN is one of the most beautiful movies of the year.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 8, 2023

If elements are undercooked, Nicholas Britell’s distinctive score and Millepied’s ambitious direction make it an intriguing, unorthodox watch.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2023

A heavily stylised, star-crossed romance with an intrusive score and odd scattering of religious icons, that has little impact outside the dance scenes, unlike the fiery star of opera it invokes who had impact to burn

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2023

Sumptuous and a swirl of feelings... pirouettes with swoon-inducing strength with help from its stunningly cast leads.

| Jul 22, 2023

Britell’s score super-juices the tragic pall over the film, while Barrera and Mescal channel Romeo and Juliet as the star-crossed lovers who communicate mostly in looks and the occasional pas de deux.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 6, 2023

While most indie films don’t require a big-screen viewing, Carmen is a work of art that should be watched on the big screen. With beautiful and mesmerizing imagery and smoldering chemistry between the leads, Millepied delivers a cinematic painting.

| Original Score: B | Jun 23, 2023

While Carmen contains another endearing turn from Mescal, alongside a tremendous score from Britell, it’s disappointing that Millepied was unable to sustain the momentum of his feature debut to the end

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 13, 2023

Instead of finding narrative interest or thematic resonance in pungent themes like migration and trauma, the film pushes obvious inspirational messages such as noting that everyone dances in their own way...

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 7, 2023

Benjamin Millepied’s Carmen would be an easier film to like if it knew what it was doing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 7, 2023

One wishes in places that it was even more experimental, throwing narrative conventions to the wind and just luxuriating in the dance.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 6, 2023

It's not a consistently surreal art-house film or even a "dance film". It’s rather like a Baz Luhrmann film with snailpace editing. Lots of attention is paid to striking visuals, not quite enough to delivering a cohesive finished product.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 5, 2023

... A peculiar blend of road movie and avante-garde musical, smothered in angelic choral music that fills the desert landscape with portentous reverb and achieves only intermittent rhapsody.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2023

Carmen fails to coalesce because the filmmakers chose style over substance.

| Jun 2, 2023

It is indeed a strange film, but not a bad one.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 2, 2023