Carmen

The choreographer Antonio is building a flamenco ballet out of Bizet's Carmen. The lead dancer he casts is also called Carmen, and she insists on belonging to no one. The line between the rehearsal room and the stage thins, and by the time Antonio recognises he is walking Don José's path, it is late. Carlos Saura takes Prosper Mérimée's novella and Bizet's music into a rehearsal room. The staging itself becomes the story: mirrors, footwork, figures repeated until they turn. Antonio Gades both leads and choreographs, Laura del Sol plays Carmen, and Paco de Lucía carries the guitar. The film is the second of the flamenco trilogy Saura and Gades made in the 1980s, after Bodas de sangre and before El amor brujo. It won prizes at Cannes and at the BAFTAs, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 56th Academy Awards. Who it's for: Viewers who like dance fused with cinema, flamenco, and stories where performance and life bleed into each other. Who it's not for: The plot is thin and the dance sequences are long. Without an interest in the dancing, much of the film will pass you by.