08/07/2011

The experienced Slovak director Martin Šulik (The City of Sun) has made the very watchable (if not exactly original) film Gypsy [+see also:
film review
film profile], which had its world premiere in the Competition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Although cinemagoers may recognise many influences, which the critics will undoubtedly call "borrowing", the film, which features largely non-professionals, seems like a healthy prospect for the Central European markets.

Adam (Ján Mižigár) is a 14 year-old boy living in a Roma village with his mother, father and three brothers. After his father is mysteriously killed, with his death dismissed by the police as a car accident but suspected by Adam to be murder, his mother marries his father's brother (Miroslav Gulyas, who's also non-professional, but acts like a veteran), which inevitably brings us into Hamlet territory. But Adam's love interest Jula (beautiful Martina Kotlárová) is more of a Romeo and Juliet material - not in the sense that the two families are in conflict, but that her family is even poorer than his.

Adam is different from other boys in the village - he is not interested in stealing and sniffing glue, but is attracted to boxing through the supportive local priest (professional actor Attila Mokos), who's a touch stereotypical (there's a photo of a young Mohammad Ali under a picture of Christ). Adam even helps the 'white' TV crew that comes to the village to film a report, which is uncharacteristically trustful behaviour for a Roma boy. The general Roma attitude towards the "whites" is described by his uncle, a loan-sharking schemer and scammer who is constantly pulling Adam into criminal activities: "The whites will never give you anything."

Šulik spent several months with the Slovak Roma, researching and casting, and the effort proved worthwhile - the film has a naturalistic feel, and the real village in which it was shot looks stunning. Although the print screened in Karlovy Vary seemed a touch bleached, the idea to show all the colours of Roma life is clear. The result is convincing and affecting, and it is only unfortunate that the director decided to include two ostriches, which gives the film too much of a 'Kusturica' ring.

The non-professional actors are excellent, the music is cleverly subtle so as not to accentuate the loudness of Roma life too obviously, with camera and editing also at a top level.

Gypsy was co-produced by In Film Praha, Titanic and RTVS and FE Agency handles the international rights.