Despite advances in our society, black women are still oppressed and under-represented in arts such as cinema. Of the 10 South African feature films executed and screened over the past year, not a single one was made by a South African woman — let alone a black woman filmmaker. U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (Carmen in Khayelitsha), a South African version of Bizet’s 1875 opera, at least places a black woman at the centre of the story. Unfortunately, the overall perspective is not that of a black woman.
Bizet’s original opera is set in Spain; it tells the tale of a young gypsy woman who works in a cigarette factory. She falls for a soldier, but later transfers her affections to a bullfighter, with tragic results. The opera has already been filmed ”straight”, by Francesco Rosi, and Carlos Saura’s dance-heavy movie of the same name investigated the opera’s sources. Part of the opera was recently staged as a film-within-a-film in Franco Zeffirelli’s Callas Forever. Notably, the idea of a movie transplanting Carmen to another era and place entirely was pre-empted by Otto Preminger, whose 1954 Carmen Jones (using Bizet’s music but new words by Oscar Hammerstein) gave the central roles to black actors Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge.
In U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, writer-director Mark Dornford-May transplants the story into a modern-day underclass setting in a Cape township, or squatter camp. The film opens promisingly with a prologue focusing on Carmen herself. The camera zooms in on her very slowly. The red colours in the production design warm us, as well as preparing us for a hot-blooded drama.
As the story develops, Dornford-May also takes us on a documentary-style journey that tells us the rest of the story, performed as an opera in isiXhosa — as is the dialogue in the film as a whole. Carmen (Pauline Malefane) lures the handsome young Jongikhaya (Andile Tshoni) from his sweetheart Nomakhaya (Lungelwa Blou), a country girl who extols the virtues of loyalty, subservience and commitment to love. Carmen, by comparison, is wild, uncontrolled, a woman fighting against the bonds of social mores — and, in the opera’s historical context, thus destined to end badly. Is this a relevant story to rework in South Africa in the 21st century?
While at the cigarette factory, the women watch a successful opera singer from the village on their television. A fight breaks out among the women and Carmen ends up stabbing a woman because she cannot get her own way. I found this catalytic moment contrived, not because it is alien to the Bizet original but because in this context I find it hard to believe that these women would actually act in such a manner over a television piece. The choreography of this scene also becomes problematic because it makes the characters seem like puppets — very heavily built puppets. It’s all done in a rather sloppy manner, as is the scene where Jongikhaya and his brother fight over Nomakhaya. These scenes are just not believable. Perhaps in the original opera one might suspend disblief, the genre being so melodramatic anyway, but here it doesn’t work.
Overall, either the opera technique got in the way of the acting, since the cast is largely made up of classical opera singers, or the task of dancing, singing, acting and expressing emotion all at the same time was too much for the cast. The music is moving to an ear, like mine, untrained in opera, but the blending of operatic melodrama and gritty documentary-style realism doesn’t work.
I very badly wanted to like this film, particularly because of its focus on black women, but its transplanting into an African setting, however well-intentioned, simply does not work. It requires the work to ask questions it cannot hope to answer. As it stands, U-Carmen eKhayelitsha vulgarises and misrepresents our sexuality as black women, thus cheapening our experience as a people.