{"id":683864,"date":"2026-05-21T09:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683864\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T09:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:35:10","slug":"viva-carmen-review-sebastien-laudenbach-spins-bizets-tragic-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683864\/","title":{"rendered":"Viva Carmen Review: S\u00e9bastien Laudenbach Spins Bizet’s Tragic Opera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Feature-length animation has largely become a merciless and exacting thing, every frame invested with such a fortune\u2019s worth of pre-determined purpose<\/a> that there often isn\u2019t any room left over for the audience to move around the images for themselves. These films used to implore our imaginations to fill the space between each cel, but the ones they make now are as seamless and inviting as the blades of a helicopter \u2014\u00a0watch from a safe distance, keep your hands to yourself, and try to enjoy the ride.<\/p>\n

And then are the films of French animator S\u00e9bastien Laudenbach, whose expressionistic linework is so colorful and free that his characters look more like aura readings than people, and whose stories \u2014 even the darker ones \u2014 betray none of the burden that was required to bring them to life. His 2023 gem \u201cChicken for Linda!<\/a>,\u201d for example, was a modern-day musical adventure about a girl named Linda who really wants chicken for dinner. It rules.<\/p>\n

\"Daniel<\/a> \"The<\/a> <\/p>\n

A swooning and sketch-like distillation of Georges Bizet\u2019s \u201cCarmen,\u201d Laudenbach\u2019s new feature obviously takes on a slightly heavier subject than his previous work (including his 2016 debut \u201cThe Girl Without Hands,<\/a>\u201d which is about a girl without hands), but it retains the same blitheness of spirit. Like the director\u2019s earlier films, it would almost seem to have been made on a whim if not for how self-possessed it feels in the telling, just as its characters \u2014\u00a0their thick black outlines filled with ever-changing swatches of color \u2014 would threaten to blend into the backgrounds if not for how clearly Laudenbach defines their feelings.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

And the feelings are naturally intense in \u201cViva Carmen<\/a>,\u201d which shrinks Bizet\u2019s opera down to a bite-sized snack that (older) kids should be able to follow and enjoy. The French-language film<\/a> begins in Spain circa 1820, when Antonio, the blind knife-sharpener, returns to Seville to the great delight of local brigands and soldiers, whose blades have grown dull in his absence. He arrives with his sensitive tween apprentice Salvador (voiced by \u201cAnatomy of a Fall\u201d breakout Milo Machado-Graner) in tow, the boy coming home for the first time since he was a child. He doesn\u2019t remember Carmen (voiced by Cam\u00e9lia Jordana), the beautiful Romani woman whose green eyes he spots in the darkness by a river one night, but perhaps he wasn\u2019t so attuned to such things when he was a child.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alas, whatever crush Salvatore may or may not be harboring for Carmen is soon eclipsed by a more urgent impulse, as Antonio \u2014 who can see the future of a knife as he sharpens it \u2014\u00a0discovers that a strapping young soldier named Jos\u00e9 will eventually stab Carmen with his dagger, a fate that his naive assistant inevitably sets into motion by trying to prevent it. And why not? Jos\u00e9 had never even\u00a0met\u00a0Carmen when the prophecy was foretold. But love is the only force more powerful than death, and woe to those who get in its way.<\/p>\n

Like much of the story in this movie, the coup de foudre that sparks between Carmen and Jos\u00e9 is condensed to a degree that makes Bizet\u2019s opera feel positively nuanced in its depiction of lust, but the speed at which things develop here \u2014 soundtracked by the jaunty clatter of castanets \u2014 reflects the velocity of the emotions at work, as well as the difficulty of holding onto hope in a world that feels like it\u2019s careening towards disaster. Laudenbach and co-writer Santiago Otheguy also recognize that kids only have so much time for romance, and rewardingly choose to divert a large portion of the movie\u2019s attention to a character named Bel\u00e9n instead, a street-tough Seville girl who serves as a bridge between the naivete of Salvatore\u2019s fantasies and the unyielding reality of Carmen\u2019s future (she\u2019s also a total badass with a bolo, which \u201cViva Carmen\u201d takes full advantage of during its few but fantastic action scenes).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Together, Salvatore and Bel\u00e9n sow a sweet friction into the film\u2019s relationship between the dictums of fate and failure, especially as they allow \u201cViva Carmen\u201d to emphasize how Seville\u2019s community of lost children might respond to the bloodshed in their midst. The mishegoss between and Carmen and Jos\u00e9 still drives the plot of course, just as it shapes the story\u2019s rhythm; Laudenbach uses it as an excuse to riff on Bizet\u2019s \u201cHabanera\u201d in the first of the film\u2019s two musical numbers, and later \u2014\u00a0in a scene crucial to this adaptation\u2019s emphasis on female agency and the folly of impinging upon it \u2014\u00a0to stage a moonlit bonfire that unites Carmen\u2019s friends in song, the animation distilling these women into pure feeling with a clarity that mocks the literalism of \u201cInside Out.\u201d But the doomed lovers are largely relegated to the background here, as Laudenbach reframes the opera\u2019s star-crossed romance for its impact on the kids who are forced to watch it unfold.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cViva Carmen\u201d is still packed to the gills with more plot than it can handle, but the film sings \u2014\u00a0sometimes literally \u2014\u00a0through its details. The shadows that flicker across the walls of a narrow alley as Bel\u00e9n fights off some witless soldiers. The way that Antonio\u2019s carving stone turns the entire screen slate gray, the sparks from Jos\u00e9\u2019s knife popping off like shooting stars. The sunset that anachronistically melts into a Monet painting, pointing forward to the beauty that will survive the sadness to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFate is fate,\u201d one character laments. \u201cIt sucks.\u201d That may be the case, but the future will always remain unfinished in our own time, a fact that Laudenbach\u2019s mutable animation \u2014 which appears to be unfinished itself, the colors always looking for cracks in the lines around them \u2014 more vividly brings to life than his film\u2019s script ever could. For all of her well-earned cynicism, Bel\u00e9n will come to appreciate that past isn\u2019t always prologue; that today\u2019s failures don\u2019t necessarily doom us to the tomorrow they seem to anticipate. \u201cThey say a person is never truly dead if you still think about them,\u201d someone consoles her. And the same, this entrancing spindle of a movie suggests, might also be true of hope.<\/p>\n

Grade: B+<\/p>\n

\u201cViva Carmen\u201d premiered at the 2026 Cannes<\/a> Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/a>\u00a0to our newsletter In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feature-length animation has largely become a merciless and exacting thing, every frame invested with such a fortune\u2019s worth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,43877,75,1554,337,209,250791],"class_list":["post-683864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cannes","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-reviews","tag-viva-carmen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}