Carmen

Saura's Carmen is a Spaniard's examination of the story which did for Spain what the Hovis ads did for Yorkshire. Like his earlier Blood Wedding, it explores the legend through various forms of popular Spanish dance and folk-song, entirely transposing Bizet's music. The result is as visually exhilarating as the earlier film, but far more complex in its ambitions and achievements. Mingling dance rehearsals with sexual encounters, real fights with choreographed rumbles, and producing a hilarious pastiche of the dreadful 'March of the Toreadors', Carmen is both a new kind of musical and marvellous cinema.