Carmen

Britell’s score super-juices the tragic pall over the film, while Barrera and Mescal channel Romeo and Juliet as the star-crossed lovers who communicate mostly in looks and the occasional pas de deux.

It is indeed a strange film, but not a bad one.

The dancing and photography are striking, and the acting’s perfectly fine. But the sum of it all is a moony inertia, lacking any awakening spark of life.

A film filled with compelling performances, but it doesn’t leave much of an impression.

It’s a heartfelt, extravagant film, swirling with melodrama and music.

It half-works but never catches fire, and is lacking in the very elements — truth, beauty, freedom, love — it seeks to espouse.

Melissa Barrera dazzles as brilliantly as she does in Jon M. Chu’s In the Heights, and her chemistry with Paul Mescal delivers a deeply memorable romance.

Opera fans will not be happy with the liberties Millepied has taken with the material. And those with a taste for more provocative and iconoclastic fare? Sadly, they’re out of luck too.

Where Carmen really soars is in its translation of drama into dance. It’s an inspired move, pairing this almost mythical story with such a primal medium.

CARMEN is one of the most beautiful movies of the year.