"Carmen" - Film Review
In Carmen, the loss of a loved one is a strange mix of emotions for Carmen (Natascha McElhone). She spent more than thirty years of joyless living as housekeeper and assistant in the rectory of her brother (Henry Zammit Cordina), a priest, until he passed away suddenly from a never-explained illness. Despite the fact that she gave so much of her life to the Church, it turns its back on her when her brother dies. Carmen has no family left to turn to, but when she’s mistaken for the new priest, it’s as though she’s been given a fresh lease on life.
After her brother’s passing, Monsignor (Paul Portelli) tells Carmen that she “will live eternally in bliss” because of her lifelong commitment to the Church. Carmen is skeptical, and asks when she will experience this bliss Monsignor speaks of. His reply is simple. “When you die, of course.” Although she doesn’t outwardly express it, Carmen is clearly disappointed in that moment. For so much of her life she has lived for someone else and conformed to the role they wanted her to play. It’s devastating to Carmen that she must continue to toil and struggle for the rest of her earthly life.
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Except she doesn’t. Carmen is about experiencing a sense of liberation that wasn’t a possibility for a very long time. At its simplest, the film is about one woman’s journey of freedom that, in turn, saves an entire village. Change is infectious. The confidence of Carmen permeates the collective consciousness of the other local women.
Of course, monumental change like this is not without its problems for Carmen and the villagers. Carmen is interested in the impact of the Church on communities and people, but also wants to highlight the difference between how things were and how they could be in terms of a religion. When she was working for her brother, Carmen felt Church was a chore. An obligation that was never for purely spiritual reasons. When Carmen is masquerading as the new priest, she cancels all Masses and only holds confession where she gives people genuine answers to their woes. Carmen has created a Church without obligation and a place to be heard and respected, two kindnesses she was never afforded during her service to the Church.
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There’s a beautiful, whimsical, magical realism to the film. Carmen’s spiritual guide is a pigeon that cooes as a means of prodding her along this new path. The pigeon guides her to the confessional booth, to steal candlesticks from the Church, and to the pawn shop where she meets Paulo (Steven Love), a potential love interest. This magical pigeon adds to the underlying jovial current of the film. Carmen is unexpectedly humorous, yet at times painfully serious. It’s a lovely blend of emotional wavelengths led by McElhone’s portrayal of Carmen.
Somewhere around the midpoint of the film, Carmen trades in her drab clothes for a vibrant, flowy red dress. That dress is a statement all its own. It’s loud, beautiful, and specific to Carmen – a symbol of where she started and where she will continue to go. Carmen is joyous. Despite its setting in a small Mediterranean town in the 1980s, the film feels like it’s a response to the lifestyle upheaval caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. While Covid did not force our present society into thirty-four years of Church-related servitude, a large reckoning occurred in the social consciousness. The same realization of mortality and the transience of life that dawns on Carmen dawned on most of us in 2020. Bliss, as we have all learned, should not only exist in death.
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