Scream star Melissa Barrera talks about her new movie Carmen with Paul Mescal
02.06.2023 - 09:15
/ msn.com
Melissa Barrera, at first, was hesitant to sign onto a film like Carmen. "I'm always very careful about coming onto a project that touches upon immigration, because I'm so used to the stereotypes," says the Mexican actor, who first moved to the US to study musical theatre at New York’s Tisch School of the Arts. "I'm so used to the narrative always being violence and struggle.
And always, like, '¡Pobrecito!', '¡Pobrecito!', which means 'Oh, poor thing!' That's the lens through which these stories are told. "But Carmen, a dance-led adaptation that seeks to redefine the femme fatale of George Bizet's tragic opera, enthusiastically rejects all that is familiar, conventional, or simplistic. Lovingly ushered onto the screen by choreographer and first-time director Benjamin Millepied, it's an old story fully revitalised, now told through fluid movement, a mesmeric new score by Nicholas Britell, and a sense of poetry that borders on the metaphysical.
As played by Barrera, this Carmen is forced, after the death of her mother, to flee across the US-Mexico border in order to seek safety in a club owned by an old friend, Masilda (Rossy de Palma, a regular in Pedro Almodóvar's work). Along the way, she meets Aidan (Paul Mescal), a US soldier sickened by the cruelty around him, who finds himself equally on the run after a spur-of-the-moment decision to defend Carmen. "It's told in a way I've never seen before," Barrera tells Digital Spy.
"In a way that feels hopeful, that has beauty in it. And for a character that's an immigrant woman, you know, crossing a border – I was very excited to do something that felt so out of the box. " There are certainly traces of Bizet's 1875 opera here, alongside its source, Prosper Mérimée's novella of
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