STAR LINE PRODUCTIONS
presents
C
armen
Starring
PAZ VAGA
LEONARDO SBARAGLIA
JAY BENEDICT
A feature film directed by
VICENTE ARANDA
Based on the novel by Prosper Mérimée
Produced by Bill Chamberlain And Juan Alexander
Running time: 119 mins Certificate: tbc
Publicity Information:
Giorgia Lo Savio
Verve Pictures
tel: 020 7287 2750
email:
‘CARMEN’ will open in London and Selected Cinemad Across the Country in July
CARMEN Memoire
THE NOVEL
Since it was first published in 1847, the novel Carmen has been adapted to the opera, to the theatre, to the dance stage, to the world of fine arts, to the review, and to the cinema. We have chosen to revert to Prosper Merimee’s original text as our source of inspiration for this project. On the threshold of a new century so dominated by rapid communication technology, it is our feeling that the original text, which, with the passage of time, remains an inexhaustible source of creative possibilities, can allow us to transcend certain realms of paradise in which passion and the freedom to choose our own destiny can mitigate much of the cruel haste of our age and nourish our most heroic dreams.
THE CHARACTER
The story of Carmen is one of fate being strummed by the hand of Destiny, as in Greek tragedy. It is an overwhelming story of love and death.
This tragedy stems from the clash between two diametrically opposed worlds: the worlds of anarchy and order. And it is Carmen’s seductive disorder that must die if law has to prevail.
Carmen continues to represent the free, modern woman. But this freedom straddles the two frontiers she treads and to which she has given herself with a courage and conviction bordering upon fanaticism: her race and her destiny.
Prosper’s Carmen embodies several myths about woman, hence her overwhelming power and timelessness: she is Pandora (full of spiritual gifts, divine beauty and the seeds of evil); she is The Fatal Woman, the Three Furies (who control the destiny of men); she is Venus (Goddess of love, and, therefore, polygamous), and she is, as well, Diana (cruelty and vengeance). That is what makes Carmen so classical and universal, so fascinating and so steeped in the conflicts of today.
OUR AESTHETIC CHOICE
We shall also use Merimee’s original novel as the point of departure and exceptional original guide for the kind of aesthetic we wish to bring to the work. The use of colour as a narrative key and indicator of the feelings dominating the characters: red (devastating passion); black (death, the devil); yellow (ill-omen); white (Carmen’s innocence, which proves to be simply overwhelming).
THE DIRECTOR
To talk about love and death (Lovers), jealousy (Jealousy), the overwhelming force of passion (Juana La Loca) sex (Turkish Passion) hate and vengeance (Straw-haired Fanny) or freedom and the code of honour that governs an entire race (El Lute), there is no one better than Vicente Aranda. Few have managed to capture so remarkably well the kind of feelings often nurtured during a war or in the course of a battle (Riders at Dawn).
THE CAST
In our quest for fidelity, and the best possible acting talents, we have gone for a suitable blend of proven experience and the freshness and exuberance of youth.
Carmen will be played by Paz Vega, the Spanish actress of the moment. In just a couple of years, she has played many roles which have won her so many accolades among public and critics alike, in film successes such as The other side of bed, Novo, Sex and Lucia, for which she won the Goya award for Best Female Newcomer in 2002, She’s Mine, as well as Almodovar’s latest offering, Talk to Her.
For the part of Jose, we have chosen the Argentine actor, Leonardo Sbaraglia, one of the most popular actors in Latin American Cinema today, whose remarkable descent upon the Spanish market in recent times is there for all to see, in films such as Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s Intact, which won him the Goya award for Best Male Newcomer in 2002, Utopia, The city with no limits, and Desire. He is one of the most promising acting talents in film today.
THE TECHNICAL CREW
To guarantee the impeccable quality of our project, we have vouched for a technical crew second to none. To that end, as production designer, we have gone for Benjamin Fernandez, whose vast experience includes work in Hollywood, and one of the best costume designers in the world today, Yvonne Blake, the winner of an Oscar and several BAFTAS and Goyas. Paco Femenia will be in charge of photography. He has worked some of the most prestigious directors in our country, among them Almodovar and Agustin Diaz Yanes. He was also DOP on Vicente Aranda’s recent Juana, La Loca / Mad Love
CARMEN Short Synopsis
On a journey through Spain, the French writer Prosper Merimee is forced by fate to be the witness of a story of passion. The free, enigmatic nature of a woman called CARMEN, her southern beauty, her passionate, impulsive character turn the sergeant, Jose, into the victim and protagonist of a fatalistic chain of extraordinary events, turbulent loves, uncontrollable passions, jealousy and bloodshed.
With each of Carmen’s string of new lovers, with each new episode of love, passion and jealousy, Jose takes another step towards alienation and delinquency. Death stains Jose’s hands red, time and again until, finally, after shooting Carmen’s latest lover, he tries to take her far away and start a new life.
But neither entreaties nor threats are of any use. In vain he humbles himself before Carmen, offering her a prosperous and happy life. His impassioned words of love fall on deaf ears and the most callous indifference. Frustration and passion drive Jose once more to unsheathe his dagger. What else could he do?
If each episode of love is a small death, how can all of Carmen’s love be retained, how can her searing fire be embraced?
CARMEN Long Synopsis
PROSPERO, a man of letters of French origin, is on his way to Granada and Cordoba to carry out research on the Omeya and Nazari dynasties. On horseback, he traverses the Andalusian countryside, accompanied by his servant and guide, ANTONIO. Along the way, they meet a man, of average height and powerful build, of dark complexion and sombre expression. From his rather refined appearance, it is clear that he is not the common bandit often encountered in those parts. This isn’t lost on PROSPERO, keen observer that he is. Knowing that there is no need to be overly worried, he is not afraid to greet the stranger. The person in question is JOSE, from Navarre, the most wanted man in Andalusia, wanted for murder and banditry. In spite of the servant’s clear misgivings, the two men strike up a conversation, in the course of which Jose confesses his crimes and hunger. JOSE, who trusts PROSPERO to say nothing, is rather fearful, however, of the servant’s suspicious look. Out of precaution, both travellers take leave of each other, with mutual best wishes for the rest of their respective journeys.
As fate would have it, PROSPERO and JOSE meet again, this time at the prison, to which JOSE is now confined, having handed himself in to the authorities. PROSPERO offers to help him after a most summary trial, in which JOSE is condemned to death by the garrotte. JOSE’s only wish now is to die. But before that, he wishes to tell his story to PROSPERO.
The source of the terrible misfortune that has befallen JOSE is CARMEN, the gypsy girl who stole his heart. His passion for that dark-haired girl with deep, penetrating eyes has made him in to the very opposite of what he had wanted to be in life: a man of honour. But he can’t do without her.
Carmen works as a cigar roller in a tobacco factory and, at the time that they meet, JOSE is the sergeant on guard at the sentry post in that part of the city. He knows nothing about her, but Carmen is already very popular in the lively night district of Triana.
It all starts when JOSE is ordered by his senior officer to arrest CARMEN following a skirmish at the factory, in which she ends up stabbing one of her work colleagues. He is completely bowled over by her dark eyes, her provocative hips and her voice like honey; and ends up letting her go. JOSE is sent to prison, stripped of his sergeant’s stripes, and charged for neglect in the course of his duty.
His recompense for that favour is not long in coming; not in the form of money, but in the form of CARMEN’s fiery body, well-versed in the art of love-making. JOSE loses his virginity, though, with such a loss, he gains pleasure of the type never previously experienced. From then onwards, he can’t get CARMEN out of his system. But CARMEN is a most capricious woman. Anyone who can give her money or jewellery, or provide the slightest pleasures to her stomach, is rewarded with her company in bed. Out of jealousy, JOSE is driven to commit his first murder.
After the death of his senior officer, JOSE has to flee JEREZ, to the safe company of a group of bandits in the mountain range – DANCAIRE, JUANELE, VETUSTO – all members of a band led by a certain ONE-EYE, CARMEN’s gypsy husband, who is still in prison serving time for one of his many contraventions of the law. But JOSE disregards the marital union that supposedly exists between ONE-EYE and CARMEN and sees himself leading a happy life with this woman he has come to love. Using all her wiles, the clever gypsy girl leads JOSE to believe that she belongs only to him.
Hijacking and robbery become the way of life of the former respectable army sergeant, whose religion and upbringing had previously prevented him from performing such deeds. He knows that it is the only way for him to be close to CARMEN, and doesn’t hesitate to choose such a life.
When ONE-EYE comes out of prison and rejoins the band, JOSE’s jealously grows. CARMEN’s goadings only add further fuel to his already inflamed heart and he ends up fatally stabbing ONE-EYE. With Carmen’s husband out of the way, JOSE’s overriding desire is now to begin life anew, with Carmen. So blinded is he by that desire that he doesn’t see that she is a being moved only by a craving for unbridled freedom, a creature that will never allow herself be tied down by anyone or anything.
When CARMEN takes a new lover, a very wealthy and famous bullfighter called LUCAS DOMEQUE, JOSE is once again driven to stain his hands in blood. He catches CARMEN in bed with the bullfighter. After shooting her lover, JOSE literally drags his wife away from the scene of the crime.
No amount of begging is going to serve his cause now. No amount of promises of a fruitful life together, no amount of talk of love and passion either. Fate lurks before JOSE’s very eyes, but he chooses not to see it.
CARMEN Director’s Notes
In choosing a character like Carmen our desire is not just to confine ourselves to the superficial about her, to the anecdote of a woman who “drives men crazy”. We also want to delve into her motivations.
Carmen is Spanish, but was always moulded by foreign hands, resulting in her character being dispossessed of its context. Nevertheless, there are certain facts, among them one very fundamental one: she lived in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century.
Spain in that period was a country of contrasts, a geographical area anchored in a recent historical experience – the Napoleonic invasion – a chessboard on which that eternal of human dichotomies was played out: freedom or order, or, what amounts to the same thing, chaos or tyranny.
The backdrop of a country where injustice must be corrected by taking to the hills with a blunderbuss, where bandits appear who “steal from the rich to give to the poor”, where, logically, chaos puts in an appearance constantly with the intention of becoming a rule, might explain much about Carmen.
Reducing it to pure synthesis, we could say that Carmen, over and above the classification that would brand her as “femme fatale” par excellence, is a “normal” woman who, as still happens with so many women in our times, refuses to give in to her own emotions. The driving force of this character is so complex that, as inevitably happens in the most day to day situations, no doubt through lack of culture, Carmen has become an enigma before her very own eyes.
But what is clear is that, in her – in her spirit – she encapsulates, in a symbolic way, like some specific field of research, the same paradox which afflicted Spain at that time: Freedom or order…”
The tragedy of Carmen consists in the fact that, in order to accede to the demands of her emotions, she must lose her freedom. Moreover, Carmen detests order.
Carmen accepts death without the need to intellectually explain such a difficult enigma. Why? The most conventional explanation that everyone seems to want to give, perhaps out of a desire to calm not only their own conscience but that of others, is that she is superstitious. That falls short. Because, apart from her being superstitious, Carmen’s character is incompatible with the idea of the home and the daily submission to a husband. She has no desire to suckle a child, become an old woman, no wish to limit her feelings to a single experience, nor does she want to be, like most women, constantly to and fro between the kitchen and the dining room with a plate in her hands. If you like, you can call this the vocation for liberty or rebellion, but also for supreme lucidity.