My first reaction when I heard of a new animated feature film adaptation of Georges Bizet‘s 1875 opera, Carmen, was that despite the animated form it was taking, this had to be for adult and fans of opera, especially this one which is perhaps the most performed around the globe to this day. Wrong. This is animated for a key reason, an attempt by director Sébastien Laudenbach to appeal to younger viewers, as well as adults, to take this well-worn tale and reinvent it from the perpective of a child’s eye. Fusing with wildly varying and alive colors and ‘toonful moments, Viva Carmen is anything but an animated opera, but a fully realized coming-of-age story for the young boy now at the center of it.

I vividly remember seeing Walt Disney’s daring, genre-breaking Fantasia as a kid not too interested in classical music, but with Mickey Mouse conducting and all those startling and stunning visuals it grabbed my interest, and much, much later on subsequent viewings my appreciation for the genius of Disney putting this musical form right into the laps of his young audience in ways they would always remember. The same can be said of Laudenbach, best known for the wonderful Chicken For Linda and The Girl Without Hands, who is introducing Bizet to a whole new generation. Sort of.

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If you think this is pure opera, sung all the way through, think again. There might be really only a couple of musical numbers, the rest of Bizet’s score is more subtly suggested in clever orchestrations by composers Amine Bouhafa and Isabelle Laudenbach. This version seems inspired by the very beginning of the actual opera with a children’s chorus, but it deviates while still being faithful to its core.

Set in 1829 Seville, a colorful town full of sailors, crooks, and other assorted characters of every shape and description, we meet the orphaned Salvador (voiced by Milo Machado-Graner), the eager assistant to the blind knife grinder Antonio (Paul Minthe), who comes upon the titular and engaging gypsy woman, Carmen (Camelia Jordana). There is no question this beautiful creature stands out in this place, but there are very bad vibes coming in the form of Antonio’s uncanny ability to foretell the future in mirrored images on his sharpened blade. Here is where Salvador can see the ultimate deadly fate for Carmen who will be murdered by a soldier, Jose (Carl Malapa). In an Oliver twist from Bizet’s focus on Carmen and Jose, this take zeroes in on Salvador determined to stop fate in its tracks with the help of his band of orphaned street kids, primarily the intense and take-no-prisoners Belén (Soumaye Bocoum), who will act as a go-between with Salvador and Carmen. She becomes a key piece of the puzzle here, and lends the feminist angle that triggered Laudenbach’s interest in reworking this age-old story which was primarily filled with passion and jealousy in the face of impending death, but now is, for lack of a better term, more family friendly. Still this is undeniably a Carmen in the post #MeToo era.

This is not to say Laudenbach and his screenwriter Santiago Otheguy get preachy or sanitize the situation or the eventual fate of Carmen, it is simply a way in to talk to, not down to, younger viewers who in this telling will learn grief is a sad, but necessary fact of life, and at the end (not the complete downer finale of the opera) there can be renewal.

In addition to having lofty themes, this is also a fairly rousing adventure with enough visual panache to keep any kid from fidgeting in his seat. It is gloriously animated, far from the CGI look of so many kid-oriented ‘toons, with a look and feel that adults will also welcome. Whether this creates a new generation of opera lovers is a question for another day, but it certainly works on its own terms.

Viva Carmen premiered last month in Cannes in the Directors Fortnight section, and is playing in competition this week at the Annecy Film Festival in France.

Producers are Damien Brunner, Thibaut Ruby, Pierre-Henri Léon.

Title: Viva Carmen
Festival: Annecy (Competition)
Director: Sebastien Laudenbach
Screenplay: Santiago Otheguy
Cast: Camelia Jordana, Milo Machado-Graner, Soumaye Bocoum, Carl Malapa, Paul Minthe.
Running time: 1 hr 30 mins
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