Valerie Buhagiar’s latest work as director and writer of Carmen instills a particularly warm and personal connection to the film. Buhagiar, a Maltese-Canadian actor and director, welcomes her audience into the world of 1980s Malta and the liberation of its protagonist from the confinement of Roman Catholicism. Carmen (Natascha McElhone) embarks on a journey of self-discovery and personal autonomy after her brother, whom she’d been tending to most of her life, passes away.
The Maltese islands serve as both a romantic backdrop and a reminder of the destructive religious history for those who don’t fit into conventional notions of the Catholic way of life. Gorgeous architecture envelops the film in both a painful history and hope for cultural progress. We see Carmen overshadowed by the pews in her local church where her brother Francis (Henry Zammit Cordina), the village priest, gives a sermon about the disposability of children who sin against their parents. Carmen lives with her brother and follows Maltese tradition in which the sister of a priest must act as a caretaker to both him and the church. However, after his death, she is left isolated and without purpose in a religious community which tells her that “a servant is not holy if she is not busy.”
Carmen’s frustration develops into a period of reflection of her time as her brother’s keeper and of the years spent as a “domestic servant” of the church. She asks why God has forsaken her, then is led by a spiritual guiding force into the confessional cabinet where she takes over as the role of a priest when her brother’s replacement is mysteriously absent. These guiding events cannot be rationally explained, but are instead implied as a form of divine intervention – an answer to her questions.
The progression of Buhagiar’s protagonist can be traced by her changing outlook on Catholicism, coupled with the gradual addition of vibrant colors into her appearance. Churchgoers whisper to each other about their priest’s reclusive sister – draped in muted gray fabric – and their assumptions of how she became tied to a life of servitude. In mourning of her brother, her wardrobe is composed of stark black lace and modest dresses. When Carmen sets out for a nearby island to trade in her brother’s belongings for her own income, she invests in herself, complete with a flattering haircut and a red dress that many women her age might shy away from. Carmen’s refusal to accept societal expectations of aging is one of this film’s greatest strengths. Instead of hiding from her community in subservience, she embraces the truth that women of any age are of more value than their submission to men.
The feminine archetypes are hinted at in Carmen to compare how a 50-year-old woman is perceived by different members of her community. To the holy men at her church, she is a patron saint of domestic work. To the women she consoles in her role as a female priest, she resembles the Virgin Mary. To a crude sailor, she is a siren, luring men with her dark femininity. But above all, she transcends each of these roles given to her, to become something of her own design. At the end of the film, Carmen is at peace in her role as the resident female priest of her village, where she is entitled to bliss and liberation without fear of condemnation.
Photo courtesy of Good Deed Entertainment
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