Carmen on the Lake - an engaging filmed opera set on Lake Constance

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It’s 7am here and we've just got up. For us, this is late but we went to the first of the Summer Film Festival movies last night in Bunbury, Western Australia. The movie ‘Carmen on the Lake’ took just over 2 ½ hours but kept us enthralled from start to finish. Bizet's opera is set on the water-stage in Bregenz on Lake Constance. The set designer was Es Devlin and we watched a short interview with her before the film started. The set consists of a pair of hands which stretch some 24 metres above the lake, completely dwarfing the performers Between the hands are a number of playing cards each 30 square metres in area. These are poised as if they have just been thrown up in the air by the hands. At one stage Carmen runs across the stage and finally plunges into the lake and swims off. In another scene the gypsies engage in a fiery dance in the shallow water at the front of the stage and Carmen finally meets her end when she is drowned by Don Jose. I can’t find a free-to-use image of the stage but perhaps you might like to google it. Carmen was played by a very passionate and convincing Gaëlle Arquez and Don Jose by Daniel Johansson. Lake Constance consists of three bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps. Germany, Switzerland and Austria can all lay claim to the lake. We stayed on its shores in Germany in 2015 and the photo shows the masts of some of the many yachts that were moored near the caravan park.