Review questions for Carlos Saura's Carmen:

I.- How is the question of struggle represented in the film? What foms of resistance/oppositionality are dramatized in the film? Explain the dramatization of violence as cultural clash. Some of these forms of struggle might include: gender struggle, struggle as Gypsies, struggle as performers, stuggle as producers of culture, identity self-struggle, high culture/popular culture clash, French/Spanish. How do these struggles converge on the body?
 

II.- How is the  duality reality/imagination, rehearsal/spectacle  dramatized in the film? How do these two planes interface in the film? Why? What do they tell us about the nature of representation? about the notion of identity as self-determination or as social construction?
 

III.- Self-reflexivity and mirror imagery in the film. In what ways does this imagery provide a point of view for the spectator? How does the camera position condition the spectator’s reading of the film? Are these techniques used as reflectors of reality? to represent internal conflict? mis-recognition? pressure to conform? identification of the spectator? How do they challenge the cinematic “reality effect”?