Metafictional Mise En Abyme in Saura's Carmen

In the 1983 film Carmen, Carlos Saura creatively refashions Merimee's novella and Bizet's opera into an exciting new rendering of the Carmen myth. The foundation of this film rests on Merimee's narrative, which Saura admires for having the ability to convey a passionate love that still seems as fresh and expressive as it was in its own day (52). Since Saura views the plot modifications introduced in Bizet's opera as being a betrayal of Merimee's novella (55), he ignores the opera's story line and concentrates instead on its music, which he describes as being very beautiful, truly inspired, and having moments that are both extraordinary and unforgettable (56). This double heritage of Merimee's plot and Bizet's music provides the context within which Saura is able to introduce yet another art form-dancethrough the brilliant choreography of Antonio Gades.1 Upon its release, this film was critically hailed as a flamenco version of the Carmen story. It is important to keep in mind, however, that Saura does not simply recast the Carmen story in the form of a flamenco ballet. Rather, his film is an account of the daily activities of a dance troupe while in rehearsal for such a production.2 As such, the film consists of a frame (which shows the "real" lives of the dancers) and the embedded Carmen ballet (in which the dancers assume then· roles for the rehearsals). Reviewers of the film generally consider the modern frame story to be superfluous, distracting, and inferior to the dance sequences (e.g., Canby, Forbes, Stein, Bowers). If we examine Merimee's novella, however, we see that the Carmen story originally did exist within a frame. Chapters one and two of the novella are narrated by a French archaeologist who, during his travels in Spain, is told the story of Carmen's life by her lover, don Jose, in the novella's third chapter. For Bizet's opera the librettists discarded this frame and freely adapted Merimee's material concerning the love affair between Carmen and don Jose. In Saura's film the framing device reappears-albeit in a different form-thereby restoring the Carmen tale to its original status of an embedded story within a larger narrative. In this way Saura echoes the overall structure of Merimee's novella in addition to using the basic plot elements of its Carmen tale. More importantly, however, by placing the ballet within a frame story, Saura allows his film to display the textual self-awareness associated with metafiction. Not only can he show the viewer how artistic illusion is achieved, but he can also use the framing device to establish a mise en abyme that draws parallels between the principal characters in the film's frame and the parts they play in the ballet. Through his use of the modern frame story Saura is able to recast the nineteenth-century material into a twentieth-century format that explores two major concerns of metafiction: the process of creating fiction and the transgression of narrative levels.3 In his previous flamenco film, Bodas de sangre, Saura had concentrated solely on the first of these concerns; in Carmen he includes the second as well. A brief comparison of Bodas de sangre and Carmen will clarify how Saura increased his metafictional thrust from one film to the next. Saura's Bodas de sangre is divided into two distinct sections: preparation and performance. The performance portion consists of an uninterrupted dance adaptation of Garcia Lorca's play by the same name. It is preceded by a lengthy back-stage look at the dancers, singers, and musicians making ready for that performance. The second section is totally detachable from the first and can stand on its own as a fully realized dance production. But by coupling it with the opening section, Saura is able to expose the process involved in creating an artistic product. In his next film, Carmen, Saura explores to an even greater degree the concept of art as an act of illusion making. Whereas Bodas de sangre simply shows the immediate preparations which go into a single performance, Carmen deals with the ongoing procedures involved in bringing an entire stage production into being. …