Scream star Melissa Barrera talks about her new movie Carmen with Paul Mescal
msn.comMelissa Barrera, at first, was hesitant to sign onto a film like Carmen. "I'm always very careful about coming onto a project that touches upon immigration, because I'm so used to the stereotypes," says the Mexican actor, who first moved to the US to study musical theatre at New York’s Tisch School of the Arts. "I'm so used to the narrative always being violence and struggle.
And always, like, '¡Pobrecito!', '¡Pobrecito!', which means 'Oh, poor thing!' That's the lens through which these stories are told. "But Carmen, a dance-led adaptation that seeks to redefine the femme fatale of George Bizet's tragic opera, enthusiastically rejects all that is familiar, conventional, or simplistic.
Lovingly ushered onto the screen by choreographer and first-time director Benjamin Millepied, it's an old story fully revitalised, now told through fluid movement, a mesmeric new score by Nicholas Britell, and a sense of poetry that borders on the metaphysical.
As played by Barrera, this Carmen is forced, after the death of her mother, to flee across the US-Mexico border in order to seek safety in a club owned by an old friend, Masilda (Rossy de Palma, a regular in Pedro Almodóvar's work).
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