CARMEN – a film by Valerie Buhagiar -SPOILERS

A lighthearted tale about the horrors of big religion, CARMEN takes place in an isolated Maltese village in the 1980s where the police station is across the street from the church and neither place does very much business. A cop napping on a bench nearby must be roused to unlock the church for services. Carmen (Natascha McElhone) attends a mass conducted by her brother, the local priest. She has been her brother’s unpaid housekeeper for many years, ever since her lover Ahmad (Chakid Zidi) was found dead at the bottom of a cliff just before they were preparing to run away together. She was told that he had killed himself.

The only part of the priest’s sermon we hear involves an unfortunate reinterpretation of Khalil Gibran: “Our children aren’t ours to keep,” the priest intones. “They are God’s. If they sin they would be betraying us and betraying God, and if they do that, throw them out.” This is a very unusual thing for a Catholic priest to say, but it fits in well with a scene from later in the film where two men are playing checkers outside in the evening and having a discussion about Arab immigrants. One of the men is racist; the other does not seem to be. (The anti-Arab dude is called inside by his mother after he begins singing loudly.)

Instead of the rest of the sermon, we hear worshipers gossiping about Carmen: “She’s like the living dead,” they say. ““She never smiles and never speaks.”

Carmen’s brother dies suddenly and Carmen learns that the new priest assigned to the parish will be cared for by his own sister, Rita (Michela Farrugia), who already lives in town. Carmen is now homeless, and sits on the street with her suitcase with nowhere to go. Spotting a lone pigeon (pigeons are closely related to doves) she decides to follow it. The bird leads her back to the church, and Carmen sleeps in the belfry that night, dreaming of ringing the bell.

Rita visits Tonio (André Agius), the town’s bellringer, and breaks off their relationship, citing her new duties to her brother (who has not yet arrived in the village) as the reason. Upset and frustrated, Tonio rings the bell so hard that he breaks the clapper. Carmen watches it all from the shadows.

The local policeman (Peter Galea), who regularly naps (and from whom Carmen steals a key to the church while he is asleep), sums up the situation in the town. “No Mass and no bells,” he says. “Not much of a church anymore. If the bells don’t ring, the angels won’t come down.”

Carmen begins to hear confessions (something women in the Catholic Church are not permitted to do), and rather than assign penance like a normal priest would, gives practical advice. A woman confesses that she wishes that her unbearable husband would leave her, and Carmen tells her: “Go home to your husband Make him the same food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Do that until he doesn’t come back.” The husband does not return and the woman praises the result as a miracle. Carmen’s time in the confessional makes her happy, but as she is walking through town afterward she encounters a frightening procession of what appear to be Penitentes wearing hoods and carrying crosses, but she passes through the procession without incident, possibly signifying that she is no longer in bondage to the church.

A pigeon lights on the church’s collection box, which has been receiving increased donations from parishioners happy with Carmen’s advice. Carmen takes that as a sign, and uses that money to support herself. She eventually removes some gold items (chalices and the like) from the church, carting them by bus to another town where, guided by yet another pigeon, she locates pawn shop owner Paolo (Steven Love) who manages to fence them for her with few questions asked. Paulo’s mother is Maltese, his father is Canadian, and he inherited the shop from his grandmother Maria. Paolo is likely a representation of writer/director Bughagiar herself, who based CARMEN loosely on the life of her Aunt Rita.

Relaxing on a nearby beach with Paolo, Carmen describes how Ahmad, the love of her life, saved her from certain death during World War II. “They bombed us every second hour,” she explains. “One day I was running to the shelter, and the German pilot flew so close I could see the colour of his eyes, and then a boy grabbed my hand, and he pulled me into a corner, and the pilot dropped a bomb on the shelter, killing everyone inside.” Paolo turns out to not be the reincarnation of Ahmad, though she had probably hoped he might be. Disappointed, Carmen solves her own problems by repurposing both the services of the church and its accumulated wealth, and finds that in the process she has solved many of the village’s difficulties as well. In the end the bell is repaired and Carmen rings it happily.

Writer/director Valerie Buhagiar told Tim Kraft of MovieWeb: “…if this film wakes people up to realize that there’s a lot of stuff out beyond their own town, their own homes, then that’s great. And many people have been emailing me, messaging me, and saying, ‘I learned so much while being entertained. Thank you for not hammering it and being preachy.’ Which is great, because that’s what my intention was.”

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CARMEN can be streamed on FREEVEE, and is available on DVD and Blu-ray.