Benjamin Millepied is a world-renowned choreographer, dancer, and rising director. In 2010, Millepied choreographed and starred in the Oscar-winning feature Black Swan (2010). Since then, he has directed a number of short films, commercials, and music videos before making his feature film directorial debut with Carmen (2023) starring Paul Mescal, Melissa Barrera, and Elsa Pataky. In our conversation, Millepied discusses his relationship to the opera source material and how he envisioned reimagining elements of the story for the film. We also talk about his natural ability to visualize camera movement within a scene and what he is working on next.

I think it was just the idea of telling a story with drama, music, and dance, that the story would have a darkness to it, and that you could still use music and dance to express a story like this in a drama. It wasn’t a happy-go-lucky fantasy musical, which are great, but I think it’s the most difficult. Obviously, using dreams and real and surreal language is helpful in this context, but that was the goal.

Read my full interview with Benjamin Millepied below.

Listen to the interview here.

Danny Jarabek: Hi, Benjamin. How are you doing?

Benjamin Millepied: I’m well, how are you?

DJ: I am wonderful. Thank you so much for taking some time to speak with my today. First of all, congratulations on this film. When I left it, I said to myself … I was just absolutely mesmerized. I thought it was absolutely incredible.

BM: Thank you!

DJ: And I’m super excited to hear a little bit of your insight on it today.

BM: Thank you so much. It means a lot. Thank you very, very much.

DJ: So, I would love to hear, just to start off, a little bit of your relationship to potentially the source material and why you decided to explore this for your first directorial feature debut.

BM: Well, there are quite a few elements that bring me back to my childhood. The opera was very much part of my childhood. The music is so famous when you grow up in France, anyway, at the time. And I saw the 1984 film with Plácido Domingo when that came out. The film version of the opera that was on TV. Then, I got to see Carlos Saura’s Carmen. So, it’s something that I grew up with, and when I was in my 20s dreaming of making film, I thought it would be good to rely on a classic tragedy. But then when I started to look at the story, I discussed this actually with Peter Sellars, [the] opera director. He really said to me, “You have to reinvent it. It’s not a good story.” In the opera, Carmen’s not human, really. She’s this fantasy of what men think – this attractive, sexual, fearless being. And she doesn’t love or really can love or be loved, and also gets murdered for her freedom. They were afraid of her freedom, in the opera. So, I had to reinvent it, and a lot of inspiration came from my own experience. I’m glad that it made a lot of sense to use this story as a first film. Now I’m navigating onto other ideas.

DJ: Well, I definitely would love to come back to that to hear anything you have there. I would just love to ask, you have an experience, of course, long-time experience, as a choreographer. You directed a few shorts. How did you pull from that experience and bring it into the role of directing a feature film? Was it something that you had naturally been wanting to build up to with a goal of doing a feature or did that naturally develop and end up in this format?

BM: No, I had a love for it. I had the love for the image, for the moving image, and lighting and creating an environment. Everything was there. When I decided to make the first film, I really spent a lot of time watching films and analyzing films. By the time I got on set, I was somewhat ready for, at least, most of the challenges, but it was a first-time experience, so I learned a ton. I learned a ton, particularly on the screenplay side. It’s exciting to go work my way towards a second.

DJ: Yeah, absolutely. And so, of course, you mention a lot of elements of this you really reimagine, you reinvent. How did you begin that process in deciding what elements you wanted to build in a new way or through a new lens? Even the setting, too, is something that very much changes. So, how did you begin to go about that process?

BM: Well, I think it was just the idea of telling a story with drama, music, and dance, that the story would have a darkness to it, and that you could still use music and dance to express a story like this in a drama. It wasn’t a happy-go-lucky fantasy musical, which are great, but I think it’s the most difficult. Obviously, using dreams and real and surreal language is helpful in this context, but that was the goal. The goal was really to tell a drama with music and dance. And there’s not so many. People forget there’re not so many. You could say West Side Story is dramatic, but it still has very much the Jets and the Sharks and the way they express themselves with the 1950s physicality. It has a lightness to it. It was one of the issues that Jerome Robbins had when he made it. It was like, “How do I make gang members dance?” Yeah.

DJ: Yeah. And in this case, you make Paul Mescal dance.

BM: Yeah.

DJ: I would love to ask – you have at the core of this the brilliant Melissa Barrera and Paul Mescal. How did they find the story? How did you find them? And what made them the right fit for you?

BM: Well, I needed a Mexican woman who could sing and dance, and she was my favorite of the women I saw, for obvious reasons. I mean, you see how well it worked out, how good she is in the film, how well she sings and dances and the mystery about her and her strength from within. Of course, being Mexican, the history of the women in her life, it just worked perfectly. And Paul was just … after his first show, I was lucky to get him in time. I wanted someone who would be a real man and not pretty boy who would dance too well. I wanted someone who could really come across as a Marine for real. He was wonderful. I mean, he’s so subtle. His performance is so good, and the character, you have so much empathy for him. You read between the lines of his pain and what he’s going through. It’s just great. He’s so good.

DJ: Yeah, absolutely. Of course, Melissa Barrera does have some experience in dance and singing, but Paul Mescal a little bit less so. How did you go about directing that relationship between the two where Paul has to support Melissa in a lot of these musical moments that are really important to the story.

BM: Yeah. I mean, because he was such a physical person and someone who knows how to use his body, and I could see it in his acting, and I could see it in his relationship to sports, I wasn’t afraid. It totally worked out. And the point was there was a realism to it and a roughness to it because it couldn’t be too perfect. You know? It shouldn’t be perfect.

DJ: For sure. I’m interested to hear your thoughts on how you chose the setting for this and what the meant to telling the story specific to the US-Mexico border and all of the context surrounding that.

BM: I wrote a movie, maybe stupidly, thinking that I was set on a road trip to LA, Los Angeles, and the Mexican border. And we didn’t have the money to shoot it there. Then, the question was we were going to shoot it all in Mexico, so I scouted Mexico extensively. And then COVID started, and then I shot a movie in Australia. But I had spent so much time in Mexico and photographed it that I knew confidently that I could make it work. The language of the film lent itself to this location as well. It was a thrill to find all the locations in Australia and make Sydney look like LA. It really worked out. That was fun and there was a mystical quality to some of the locations. It was very helpful that I spent a lot of time in Mexico, for sure. I know the Los Angeles landscape well, too. It was this funny thing of like, “Oh, no, it’s not how it works. Just because you wrote the movie here doesn’t mean you actually can shoot it there.” It was one of these things I learned on the go, you know? This happens to, like, all the films. It’s crazy.

DJ: Yeah, of course. And something else I definitely want to get your insight on, that was one of the most magical parts of the movie, of course. The movie is so much tied to movement and this idea of this fluidity of the human body, and something that goes so hand-in-hand with that is the music. Your collaboration with—

BM: Yeah, it’s amazing.

DJ: Yeah. It’s absolutely incredible, the original music from Nicholas Britell. I would love to hear how you worked through that process. Was it something that he was composing early in the process to move with the script?

BM: Yeah, he was. He was because we had to write the songs ahead and the dances ahead. And I also would ask him to write temp for some scenes that was just score. And I wanted to let that give me the look, which is how I work with dance, and music implies the dance that I’m going to make, the environment I create. So, that was really important, and we talked a lot. I mean, I think the movie, the desire of this movie started with Nick. Then, when we finished it and we got together in the room, the whole operatic quality came in. And that was because we had, for years, exchanged all these different kinds of music that we loved and that maybe we wanted to influence the film. So, in the end, it’s a really original score, and it’s really strong and really beautiful and mystical. I really love it. I think it’s a really important score. I hope that people listen to it a lot.

DJ: I can certainly say that I have listened to nothing but that on Spotify for a while.

BM: Good! That’s great.

DJ: It’s so great and it’s so beautiful and so intrinsic to the story, and that’s what I absolutely love about it, too. The other component of this that I think goes hand-in-hand with the choreography, the movement of these characters, and the movement of the music is the movement of the camera. It has such a fluidity to it and this smooth quality moving in and around these musical compositions. How did you choreograph the camera alongside your choreography with the actors?

BM: I mean, that’s a very instinctive, natural thing for me to do because I choreograph in the studio and then I just grab my phone. Then I started to play with what direction makes the movement the most interesting. That’s really it. It’s not very complicated. And then the director of photography can be like, “Well, actually, it would be good to try this or try that.” There’s two of us. But in the studio, I start to play with that right away to find where there’s no dead moments, and then one thing leads to another. So, the transitions are beautiful even within a sequence. How the phrase ends and starts and where the camera’s placed. And, of course, it’s very challenging for the operator because he has to learn all these movements, he has to be on the music, he has to arrive at the right moment, but he actually recorded the audio with instructions, and he would play that. He had a version that played at the same time in his ear while he was filming the sequences.

DJ: That’s really beautiful to hear. You make it sound so easy when you describe the way that it all unfolds. But it looks that way, too, because it looks so beautiful. I definitely commend you on all of that coordination.

BM: Thank you.

DJ: And all of that effort that goes into this. It’s certainly mesmerizing to watch unfold. You did mention at the beginning that you have some ideas that you’re working through or potentially processing for the future. Can you share anything?

BM: I’m working on a film about a couple in Paris that takes place in the course of a night. And it will have a score by a composer named Andy Akiho who is a fantastic percussionist. So, that’s what I’m working on now, and hopefully shooting in Paris in the next year.

DJ: Man, that’s so exciting. I mean, I will be first in line to go see it. But thank you so much for your time.

BM: Thank you.

DJ: I really appreciate this. I absolutely adore Carmen.

BM: Thank you.

DJ: I also have to mention Black Swan is one of my favorite movies of all time, so I’ve been a big fan of your work for a while.

BM: Good. Thank you, Danny!

DJ: Thank you so much for this and I really appreciate it.

BM: No, it’s me, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. Have a good one.

DJ: Have a good rest of your day.

BM: Take care. Bye-bye.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Transcription by Tova Benson-Tilsen, Transcriber/Proofreader (tictactova@gmail.com)