Carmen, Baby

Radley Metzger transports the Prosper Mérimée classic (which was also the source of Bizet's legendary opera) to the Mediterranean coast of the swinging '60s. In the decadent world of high-life high jinks, wild parties, and easy virtue, Carmen (voluptuous sex kitten Uta Lekz) lures a hot-blooded, hunky young cop from his straight-arrow lifestyle and initiates him into a band of petty thieves and con artists led by her husband. When she dumps the kid for a sexy pop star named Baby (who sucks his alcohol from tiny baby bottles), the fatally jealous ex-cop... well, you know the story. Metzger has Lekz play Carmen as an unapologetic hedonist, less a manipulator than a pleasure-seeker who follows her impulses, a perfect player in Metzger's world of sexual freedom and gleeful exhibitionism. Yet for all the sex and fleshy eroticism, there is little explicit nudity--mostly tease and temptation. Metzger's lingering pace, perfect for such meandering jaunts as The Dirty Girls and Score, bogs the story down when the tensions should be rising, but he picks it up by the edgy climax. Metzger makes the transition to color with great style, filling the widescreen with bold, lush hues, as vivid as the passion, and scores the film with a groovy '60s soundtrack of lounge music-a-go-go. --Sean Axmaker