The first thing to know about Benjamin Millipied’s blazing new Carmen is that it’s a liberal derivation of Bizet’s 1875 masterwork of jealousy, obsession and death. Once Bizet traditionalists depart from expectation, Millipied’s update, which reimagines Bizet’s titular Spanish opera icon though a modern Mexican-American lens, is an undeniably innovative big screen love story so technically audacious and performed with such conviction it is impossible to not be swept away on its wave of grand theatricality. New York City Ballet choreographer and dancer Millipied, a first time film director, mounts a confident, colorful, genre-bending exercise in style and feeling, combining … Continue reading Dance of Doom: Lovers on the Run in Passionate, Revisionist Carmen