September 3–10, 1998

movie shorts

Gadjo Dilo

An evocative comedy with the rhythms of Romany culture.

by Sam Adams

Written and directed by Tony Gatlif

A Lions Gate Films release

Recommended

If talking about music is like dancing about architecture, then what befalls those who try to make a movie about it? Tony Gatlif has tackled the relationship between Romany (Gypsy) culture and music before in the quasi-documentary Latcho Drom, which told its story without dialogue or actors. Gadjo Dilo, which translates as "crazy outsider," takes a more conventional tack, anchoring its tale in the story of Stéphane (Romain Duris), a shaggy Parisian vagabond who has come to Romania on a quest for a singer named Nora Luca. With few belongings save a ragged pair of hiking boots and a duffel bag full of blank DATs, the amiably dogged Frenchman finds his way into a Romany village, where he is greeted with a mixture of fascination and suspicion.

While Gatlif certainly has it in mind to offset the many negative Gypsy stereotypes that have accrued over the years, Gadjo Dilo hardly presents a honeyed portrait of Romany culture. When Stéphane, in the film's first verbal exchange, tries to ask a wagonload of passing Romany women the way to the nearest village, they respond with a barrage of crude (and, to him, incomprehensible) suggestions, including a song whose lyrics go, "Bite the chain/ No, bite the cock./ Because on the chain, you break your teeth."

Stéphane's introduction to the village finally comes by way of Izidor (Isidor Serban), who first appears roaring drunk, screaming curses into the frigid night air of a deserted town square. As Stéphane gamely tries to ask Izidor (in French) about a place to get in out of the snow, Izidor bemoans (in Gypsy) the fact that his son has been taken away to prison. Although he doesn't understand when Izidor yells, "May you be cursed if you won't drink to my son!" Stéphane gets the message all right, and soon both are equally sloshed. When Stéphane pulls out a cassette of Nora Luca's music, the two share a wistfully funny moment; barely able to keep from falling over, each is transported by her rapturous voice.

That scene sets the tone for Gadjo Dilo, where music becomes the bridge between Stéphane's incomprehension and the joy and pain of the villagers' everyday life, and both are transmuted into a lightweight comedy which occasionally veers into more serious territory. Gatlif calls Gadjo the third part of a "Gypsy trilogy" begun with The Princes (1982) and continued with Latcho Drom (1993), and what this third part does best is capture the rhythms of the villagers' lives, and the way that the music that holds such totemistic significance for Stéphane is both essential and mundane to them, so central it remains unnoticed. At a funeral for a singer who has just died, Gatlif captures the moment as Izidor and friends serenade the deceased. The tune is not an elegiac dirge but a bittersweet dance, and the camera pauses for a second on each of the disparate elements that have come together in mourning: a singer's face, his hands on the accordion, a woman's fingers snapping, and Izidor's feet dancing a too-familiar pattern. For a second, Gatlif stops time, and the music seems to take up the singer's spirit; whatever else dies, the music will survive.

The morning after his drunken carouse, Stéphane wakes up alone in what he can only assume is Izidor's house, opening his eyes to find several faces staring in at him through the window. As he warily makes his way past a suspicious crowd—and as a child runs to tell Izidor that an 8-foot-tall monster has been found sleeping in his bed—the murmurs grow louder, and the villagers begin to voice their suspicions about this mysterious gadjo. "He's a bum!" one cries. "Look at his shoes!" As he edges his way onto the road leading out of town, the charges grow more serious. "He's a thief!" the shout goes up. "His bag is full of chickens!"

The delicious irony of this scene—normally the Romany are the accused, not the accusers—is deepened by the knowledge that apart from Romain Duris and Rona Hartner, the female lead, all of the Gypsy roles are filled by non-actors who must have taken great pleasure in turning the tables. This strategy also proves fortuitous in the casting of Isidor Serban as Izidor. A world-class horn-dog and bullshit artist—he immediately claims to know Nora Luca, although he never produces any evidence to support that claim—Izidor is also a desperate figure, mourning his son's absence and his own advancing age. Serban's is a total performance, without any hint or sign of falseness; only someone whose acting is totally without pretense could beg for the ground to swallow him up and not have the scene devolve into pathos (although subtitles add an unfortunate degree of alienation here). Without taking away from Hartner or Duris, it's fair to say that Izidor is the true heart of Gadjo Dilo, the character who stays indelibly etched in the mind.

Slim on plot to begin with, Gadjo Dilo takes several unfortunately predictable turns as the story draws to its conclusion. As Stéphane's love interest, the feisty, brazen Sabina, Hartner is deliciously aggressive—she's the chanteuse behind the colorful ditty quoted above—and the music Hartner adds to the film's score is thrilling. But the love story is too conventional to carry much weight, and the melodramatic ending feels trumped-up, artificial next to the rest of Gadjo Dilo's effortlessness.

But for all its minor faults, the occasional clumsy shot or ungainly scene, Gadjo Dilo resonates. With its final images, the film returns to the scene of the singer's funeral, and once again celebration and sorrow combine. That mournful dance keeps echoing through the air.