Transylvania (2006) - film review

Accompanied by her friend Marie and interpreter Luminitsa, Zingarina leaves her home in France and takes to pounding the desolate streets of Transylvania in search of the man who made her pregnant and whom she still loves with an insane passion.   When she finds him, her former lover refuses to have anything more to do with her and leaves her desolate and rejected.  On impulse, Zingarina abandons her travelling companions and decides to tag along with a wandering gypsy girl, looking for a new beginning and uncertain of what she will find in this strange and beguiling country...

Watching this latest cinematic oddity from Tony Gatlif, it’s hard not to be struck by an uneasy sense of déja-vu.  Part road movie, part exploration of the life of the nomad and East European culture, Transylvania feels like a compilation of Gatlif’s earlier films, notably Gadjo dilo (1997) and Vengo (2000), and suffers from a lack of direction and focus.

The film is engaging, beautifully photographed, and offers an insight into a world and a people with which most of us are shamefully unfamiliar.  But it lacks cohesion and passion and is, overall, somewhat less palatable than much of Gatlif’s previous work (some of which is stunning and highly recommended).  There is a story and there are characters, but these are almost peripheral to the film and hardly appear to interest the director.

Gatlif seems to be far less interested in narrative and far more preoccupied with snatching slices of life from the location and assembling these into a colourful higgledy-piggledy tapestry of music and image.  Transylvania is eye-opening and distinctive, but it doesn’t really satisfy in the way that many of Gatlif’s previous films have.

© James Travers 2008

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?