First Name: Carmen

Director Jean-Luc Godard has taken a less than reverent approach to the famed opera Carmen. Godard chose to depart substantially from the original Merimee novel and, to the horror of Bizet fans, replaced the composer's score with Beethoven string quartets and a ballad called "Ruby's Arms" by the gruff-voiced Tom Waits.

Here Carmen (Maruschka Detmers) is a femme fatale who concocts a daring plan to rob a bank while pretending to shoot a movie. Luckily she has an uncle (Godard) who was once a brilliant movie director and is now a resident at the local mental hospital. He jumps at the chance to "direct" Carmen's film of the robbery. While staging the...