Gadjo Dilo

Tony Gatlif makes movies for people who recognize that the essence of storytelling is enchantment. It's an easy point to forget, what with all these social anthropologists and French literary critics around trying to put a utilitarian or theoretical spin on a primordial human impulse. But Gatlif, a son of Spanish gypsies, is one of those rare, instinctive artists who seems wholly motivated by the desire to envelope viewers in his sense of intoxication with the world's beauty and mystery. Like his two previous American releases, Latcho Drom (1993) and Mondo (1996), Gadjo Dilo illuminates the little-understood culture of European gypsies. The main storyline concerns a scruffy-handsome young Frenchman named Stéphane (Duris) who's trekking the Balkans in search of a singer he only knows as a haunting voice on an old homemade cassette. Somewhere in Romania, the winter cold forces Stéphane to take shelter in a ramshackle gypsy village. There, he's warily regarded as a “gadjo dilo” (crazy outsider) who needs to be watched like a hawk lest he skip town with a sackful of stolen chickens. Plot happens, in a fitful, harum-scarum way, but it really doesn't seem to be the point. Instead, what Gatlif is asking us to consider (or, rather, feel) is Stéphane's reaction to the exotic, marginalized society he's been thrust into. As it turns out, Stéphane's questing heart has room enough for the ritualized craziness of gypsy life. Within weeks, he's perfectly integrated into a social milieu in which ordinary conversations include shouts of “eat the hairs of my cock!” and where plate-smashing and dry-humping are traditional dance-floor moves. Gadjo Dilo is a full immersion into a wild, flamboyant, and electrifyingly sexy culture that should revitalize the libidos of most American viewers – at least those who aren't put off by all the emotional overkill which, admittedly, verges often on Monty Python territory. Other noteworthy features are Gatlif's distinctive visual style, which combines documentary realism with dreamlike images that add emotional punch to key scenes, and the deeply affecting performances of both Duris and Hartner, who plays Stéphane's volcanic gypsy lover. (The image of Hartner rubbing her hair and body with wildflowers as she stands in steaming bath water earns instant induction into my annual compendium of yowza! cinema moments.) Gadjo Dilo's concluding scenes unexpectedly transform the lighthearted story into a grim fable illustrating how the very same passions that enrich Balkan cultures also account for their ghastly history of senseless war and “ethnic cleansing.” For Gatlif, the loving chronicler of his native culture, this is an admirably candid act of introspection that only deepens my appreciation of his powerful body of work.