Saturday, February 19, 2011

prénom Carmen

I saw this movie back in 1983 when it came out and haven’t seen it since, so I couldn’t remember much except very vaguely that I kind of liked it at the time. (Oh, and that it had Maruschka Detmers, who also appeared in La pirate and Diable au corps.) Returning to it after a 27-year interval I am surprised how well it has kept. With its wanton randomness, Godard’s self-caricature, and the scattered rants about bankers, it could almost be a comment on the present day.

The Carmen theme is only a scaffold on which the story is built – both the title, suggesting that Carmen just happens to be the protagonist’s first name, and the prominent use of music that has nothing to do with Bizet, seems to undermine any attempts to read this as an interpretation of the Carmen story.

As for the DVD, it doesn’t offer many perks, just a few photos and subtitles in eight different languages. Considering this, it’s stupid that the option to switch the subtitles off doesn’t seem to exist (or maybe I just didn’t find the right button).

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