Saura's biggest international box-office success was this self-reflexive meditation on both Bizet's popular opera Carmen and the original novella by Prosper Mérimée. Antonio Gades plays a choreographer who gets involved with his neophyte lead dancer (Laura del Sol), and grows dangerously jealous. Depicting the ups and downs of their affair in between rehearsals for Gades's ballet, Carmen is a visually hypnotic hall of mirrors in which the dancers become inseparable from their personas.