Customer Reviews

Transylvania

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an interesting film, a kaleidescopic cultural panorama set in modern-day Romania. A sensual young woman, pregnant and in some kind of personal crisis, is searching for the father of her unborn child in Transylvania, which displays an incredible mix of cultures: gypsy, romanian, hungarian, and turkish. She is traveling with a loyal friend, who apparently is French, and a convivial translator. They wander through desolate towns, seeking musicians in lively, unbearably grotty bars full of dancers, drunks, and whores.

It all seems like an exotic adventure until the woman has a terrible encounter with reality, which begins her descent into a personal chaos that is terrible to behold. Abandoning her friends with no idea where she is and no money, she takes up with an itinerant trader, who appears to genuinely care for her. Their relationship is equally chaotic - with fights, sex, and meaningless wandering - as the child grows within the woman. The background continues to fascinate with its life, poverty, and the crude grace of traditional peoples. The film simply meanders along - it was filmed without a script - giving hints into what is happening inside the characters without any real answers. The flat rejection by the old lover, for example, implies that the woman is full of an all-consuming need for love and control, doomed and unable to form durable relationships yet suicidally desperate to avoid the emptiness inside. But that is only an interpretation of a single moment.

The cumulative effect is powerful: disorder, living in the present, seeking meaning and contact. None of the principal characters is pleasant or someone you would think worth any investment, but they have charm, as do the characters who pop up in the primitive landscape. The acting is truly wonderful and believable, if raw. Recommended.

Note: I bought this in Britain, new, for $7.

The story of Transylvania is very simple. A strange French/Italian (who knows?) has come to Transylvania looking for her gypsy lover who was deported from France. She is pregnant and she's brought along her friend, who is slightly less strange. The Gypsy theme continues as the girl, called Zingarina, goes in search of freedom, love and err...doing nothing, wandering through the villages, bars and country roads of Transylvania.

What really irritates me about this film is not how oversimplistic the Romanian/Gypsy way of life is portrayed but how absolutely, incredibly annoying Asia Argento's character is. She wails and screams her way through at least half the film so that she's merely being hysterical in her mellow moments (and people accuse Al Pacino of overacting). Personally, her performance puts a dampner on the whole thing.

Otherwise, what you have is a beautifully shot film with some standout moments (see the one-man party) but a fantasy of sorts. Like Tony Gatlif's previous work, Transylvania yearns for the spiritual freedom of Gypsies (or Roma) which seems to be found by music, alcohol, pain and not caring what anyone else thinks. Just don't expect to learn anything about Transylvania.

Bogdan Tiganov - author of The Wooden Tongue Speaks: Romanians: Contradictions and Realities

Beautiful film -- sweet and sexy and sad and soulful and joyful and intelligent, full of gorgeous images and music.

very fresh film, music was osome , landscapes snowly weather and the cold really added to the actors story to tell, and yes the drinking and the drunk scenes were quite funny, getting drunk and smashing bottles on your head scene was the best.