GADJO DILO
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Lions Gate Releasing Director: Tony Gatlif Writer: Tony Gatlif Cast: Romain Duris, Isidor Serban,Rona Hartner, Ovidiu Balan, Dan Astileanu, Florin Moldovan, Mandra Ramcu, Aurica Serban, Radu Ramcu
"Gadjo Dilo," which in the Romany language of the gypsies means "crazy outsider," is a film for people who like music-- not "light FM" or elevator music, but the pulsating tones of a people who cry out because their soul is in pain. In that respect it resembles the mournful cries of the cantaor in Spanish flamenco and can easily be mistaken for a variety of songs common to Turkey and the Middle East as well as southeastern Europe. Yet "Gadjo Dilo" is not really driven by the music. If you had seen the second film in writer-director Tony Gatlif's trilogy on gypsy themes, "Latcho Drum," you would know what a music-driven film is all about. This picture, for all its humor and song and drunken reverie ends on a melodramatic note: if you treat it as metaphor for the frequent bouts of ethnic cleansing that has devastated Europe and parts of Africa in recent decades, you'd have to call "Gadjo Dilo" an out-and-out tragedy.
The film works on many levels, given the sincere and realistic acting by its three principals: Stephane (Romain Duris), a handsome young Parisian traveling through remote regions of Romania in search of a singer; Izidor (Isidor Serban), an elderly tribal leader of a gypsy village pining for his jailed son and most of all for himself; and Sabrina (Rona Hartner), who symbolizes a modern women free from the strictures of her gypsy culture who dances, laughs, cries and makes love with equal passion.
The story, inspired by the travels of a musicologist friend of the director, opens as Stephane walks through an isolated, snowy road to a gypsy village, perhaps all the way from Bucharest. A musicologist in search of a particular gypsy singer famous even in France, he stumbles upon a band of lively women in colorful native garb who spout bawdy invectives at him from their horse-driven cart, laughing all the way. When he reaches the town, he runs into an old man, Izidor, who insists that he would die rather than leave his bottle of vodka anything but empty and shares a drink with him. Quickly becoming the best of friends with the man, Stephane temporarily replaces Izidor's son who had been sentenced to six months in jail. At first treated with suspicion by the townspeople who ironically accuse him of the same sorts of thefts by which gypsies are traditionally charged, he decides to remain as Izidor's guest, learns a good deal of the language, and is accepted by the community. (The process is an arresting reversal of the typical pattern which finds third- worlders seeking havens in more prosperous areas of the world and, in fact, shares a commonality with the American hippies who shed their wealth during the early seventies to experience nirvana in the East.)
Until the dire concluding section of the piece, "Gadjo Dilo" plays like a kaleidoscopic travelogue as Stephane experiences the culture of these people and internalizes some of their values, manifested particularly in a poignant dance around a makeshift gravesite when the French expatriate pours vodka over some buried tapes as would a native.
As Sabrina, Rona Hartner--actually a fairly accomplished actress now living in Paris--turns in some breathtaking steps in the countryside and in night clubs, and in the process falls in love with the so-called crazy outsider and does he with her. Since life often follows art, we learn from the press notes that Romain Duris, a positively fetching performer, actually fell in love with Ms. Hartner, causing scripter Gatlif to rewrite some parts in a brief period of time.
Perhaps the most fascinating scene in the movie comes when the father of a woman about to be married threatens to kill the bridegroom and his party with an axe, screaming that no way will he give up his little girl. Other fascinating gypsy values include throwing money freely at performers in night clubs and calling Stephane a "faggot" for cleaning the house in which he is a guest.
"Gadjo Dilo" is a enchanting film that shows its relatively low budget only in the overly choppy editing that takes us from one colorful scene to the next. Perhaps Gatlif is not entirely objective in his virtual worship of the gypsy way of life, his evocation of a people who actually take the expression "life is a banquet" seriously--but who'd want him to do otherwise? The film is in Romany (with a smattering of French and Romanian) with English titles. Not Rated. Running time: 97 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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