MOVIE REVIEW : ‘AMOR BRUJO’ A HYMN TO PASSION AND ARTIFICE

In Carlos Saura’s film of Manuel de Falla’s “El Amor Brujo” (“Love, the Magician,” at the Royal), we sometimes seem to glimpse the soul of dance and passion.

Through a fiery net of flamenco shouts and moans, we sight a demiworld consumed by lust’s inferno, transported by a heaven of grace, united in a bond of lyricism. Heat pours out; the fire gets into our veins, too. The film’s surface, caught in earth tones, blacks and reds by Saura’s brilliant cameraman Teo Escamilla, is like the flesh of a ripe fruit, irradiated by a sun that’s just about to burst it open.

Saura and his actor-dancers, the Antonio Gades ballet troupe of his “Blood Wedding” and “Carmen”--catch, early on, a mood of rippling erotic menace. Dark currents well beneath the eyes and explode in the dances: flowing through bodies in arcs of passion. The dancers leap, feet striking with flamenco arrogance, or they circle each other in a magnetic grip of threat or attraction. Saura and Gades really create a world where passion is the raison d’etre, where you can easily see people dying for love, love surviving life, love consummated only in magic or death.

It’s a mixed, highly theatrical world. De Falla composed “El Amor Brujo” in Madrid and Granada, but its mood reminds you of Paris and his friendship with Debussy, Ravel; of that hot-blooded French-fantasy Spain of fast love, knives and languorous death. Saura sets the ballet in a Gypsy camp, a swirl of color and low life bounded by a trash-strewn field and graveyard--all on a huge movie sound stage revealed and traversed in the opening shot. This film, like “Carmen,” is a hymn to both passion and artifice. And we are aware, every second, of both.

The ballet’s characters are trapped by destiny. Two Gypsy children, Candela and Jose, are promised to each other over vino tinto by their fathers. But, when they marry, each has a different love on the sidelines: Candela, the devoted swain Carmelo; Jose, the ripe doxy Lucia. Jose is killed in a mass gang fight; Carmelo is mistakenly imprisoned. Years later, he returns to find Candela enchained and enchanted, dancing every night with the ghostly Jose in the field where he died, an enslavement from which only sorcery, and Lucia, can free her.

Carmelo and Candela are played by Gades and Cristina Hoyos (his regular dance partner); Jose and Lucia, by Juan Antonio Jimenez and “Carmen’s” star, Laura del Sol. This last may strike some as an error. Why should Del Sol--an actress of almost overpowering, luscious physicality, whose beauty helped make “Carmen” so successful, be relegated to the supporting role? (“Isn’t my body more beautiful?” Lucia once asks Carmelo, and you can see her point). But the casting is right. Hoyos is the finer dancer and she has a face a sculptor would adore. She looks like someone driven through purifying flames, consumed by tragic love, a fit match for the tormented Carmelo. Del Sol plays the role right for her--the sumptuous temptress, the fleshy hoyden. And Jimenez’s callous, narcissistic Jose is, here, her proper mate.

Carlos Saura is a great film maker who has not gotten his due in America. His work has ranged from brutal realism (“The Hunt”), stinging social satire (“The Garden of Delights”) and fierce compassion (“Cria Cuervos”) to a near-mystical exploration of the bonds of consciousness, the union of present and past (‘Sweet Hours,” “Elisa Mida Via”). All these concerns are present as well in his Gades dance films. They explore large themes; they’re imbued with psychology and a keen grasp of Spanish culture; they mine the regions between dream and reality, theater and life, the soul and the body.

“El Amor Brujo” (MPAA-rated: PG) will almost certainly be less popular than “Carmen.” But it may be the better film. The dancing of all four leads, especially Gades and Hoyos, is magnificent. (So is the singing, by Spanish pop-flamenco star Rocio Jurado.)

Even more thrilling is the spectacular unity between camera and choreography that Saura and Gades have attained together; by now it’s an almost seamless collaboration. Through their art, we stare into an abyss of passion. We can almost hear the cries of the lost and longing, feel the flames singe our flesh. But its magic is healing, pure. Love, not lust or obsession, is the last melody that beckons.

‘EL AMOR BRUJO’

An Orion Classics release. Producer Emiliano Piedra. Director/writer Carlos Saura. Choreography Antonio Gades, Saura. Camera Teo Escamilla. Music Manuel de Falla. Art director Gerardo Vera. Editor Perdo Del Rey. With Antonio Gades, Christina Hoyos, Laura Del Sol, Juan Antonio Jimenez, the Gades Company.

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

MPAA rating: PG (parental guidance suggested; some material may not be suitable for children).