Quick-paced and quick-witted, Carmen & Bolude (2025) is both a lighthearted good time and a deeply introspective watch. The film uses comedy to showcase a deeply multicultural world and all its nuances. The result is an exploration of themes like identity, heritage, culture, and community, while also presenting an entertaining tale of friendship and family.
When Bolude (Bolude Watson) wants to marry an Australian man, her Nigerian father demands she receives a hundred welcomes from a hundred villages before he’ll give his blessing. What follows is Bolude and her best friend Carmen (Michela Carattini), a multiracial but white-passing woman, embarking on a mad dash across Australia and its communities. Through this process, the two women must confront what cultural heritage means to them and how it affects their friendship.
Carmen & Bolude is a high-energy adventure from the first five minutes. In the opening scenes of the film, the two leads are introduced and their personalities quickly established. Carmen is on a train, flirting with another passenger before loudly shaming another man for groping her (Figure 2). The scene shows Carmen as loud, bold, and confident. The next scene sees Bolude in the middle of taking the bar exam when a woman, also taking the exam, has an asthma attack. Bolude quickly assists the woman before returning to her test and being the first to finish. Bolude’s confidence is more understated than Carmen’s, but still present. She isn’t loud, but intelligent and sure of her herself. These two scenes are connected by an upbeat electro-pop song that infuses the opening with an air of fun and excitement for the rest of the film.
Further emphasizing their differences and similarities, both women experience prejudice: Bolude when she is treated poorly in a bridal shop due to being a Black woman and Carmen when she is rejected for being too white-passing despite her Latino ethnicity. Bolude doesn’t speak up, while Carmen makes a scene, protesting both her and Bolude’s treatment. The reactions the two women give in their respective situations further highlight their personalities, while also setting up a major conflict for later.
Carmen’s main struggle through the film is her white-passing appearance despite being Latino and Indigenous. Bolude is a visible Black woman. The appearances of the two women shape their experiences with racism and community. By featuring two leads with this dynamic, the film is able to explore multiculturalism in a unique and nuanced way. While Bolude is easily picked out as a woman of color, Carmen must reaffirm her heritage throughout the entire film. It’s not just through the two leads that multiculturalism is explored, however. The one hundred welcomes the two women are after puts them in a position where they spend most of the film entering various communities. Each group of people meets Carmen and Bolude differently, some with open arms and others with more trepidation; but each person they meet teaches the two women something about identity. How these people choose to identify, whether through race, ethnicity, or nationality, further probes the complexities of these labels and what it means to live with them.
The film’s incredible acting also pushes the film’s themes, especially through the interplay between characters. Carmen and Bolude are the most obvious, with their varying perspectives on identity. Carmen is largely isolated from her heritage while Bolude is stifled by her traditional father’s expectations. However, Bolude’s conversations with her father and the awkward interactions with her fiancé’s family also work to show the nuances in interracial and intercultural dynamics.
At its heart, Carmen & Bolude is a journey of self-discovery. Both leads have complex inner worlds and desires that relate back to their heritage. While the film emphasizes the importance of family and culture, it also presents the beauty of multicultural communities. The friendship between Carmen and Bolude is the ultimate expression of this beauty. They share their struggles and culture with each other, creating an unbreakable bond that doesn’t transcend their differences, but is rather strengthened by it.
Author Biography
Holley Anne Brabble is a fourth-year student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington studying Film and Creative Writing. She enjoys watching and writing about film, as well as creating her own original screenplays. She recently completed her first original short film Balzarina (2024) and looks forward to spending more time on set and continuing her educational and creative endeavors.
Film Details
Carmen & Bolude (2025)
Australia/USA/Nigeria
Directors Michela Carattini and Bolude Watson
Runtime 109 minutes
