I live in Transylvania, so I was very interested in watching this movie. Now I'm sorry for wasting my time.
Very poor plot. A woman (Zingarina) comes to Romania looking for his former lover (Milan) but she finds another one (Tchangalo) to spend her life with. That's all. 5 minutes are more than sufficient for this story.
Anyway, there's no reason for Zingarina to join Tchangalo. She just does it. But actually nothing makes any sense in this movie.
No reason for anyone's behavior - unless Tony Gatlif (writer & director) wanted to offend the spectators' intellect.
No reason for so much music - unless T.G. wanted to accomplish a folk music compilation and inserted some playing between videos.
No reason for using so many languages (Romanian, Hungarian, Romales, Ukrainean, German, French, English and Italian), most of them spoken by the same people.
No reason for using a language or another in a particular situation: sometimes 2 persons talk to each other using everyone another language; Milan uses Romanian when talking to Zingarina, yet she doesn't understand Romanian; Zingarina is the only one using Italian; people use Romanian to Tchangalo, but this one uses only other languages; Tchangalo speaks French but he uses English when talking to Zingarina and so on.
Most of all, I see absolutely no reason for naming this movie "Transylvania". Only the music and the speech are specific to this land, but I don't think the title may be chosen according to them. It's like using the title "USA" for any movie with its story placed in USA.
Moreover, this movie is filled with a lot of unreal situations. For example, don't trust anything that happens in a restaurant or bar, you will never see that in real Transylvania. Don't trust anything about the church and the priest, especially the scene with the priest imprecating Tchangalo. Don't believe many other things.
The entire movie is nothing but a collection of stereotypes about Transylvania/Romania. This kind of movies used to be the focus of Romanian cinema about 15 years ago. I cannot understand how a French director could make such a movie in 2006.
And the playing is so unnatural that I suspect there was no casting.
Very poor plot. A woman (Zingarina) comes to Romania looking for his former lover (Milan) but she finds another one (Tchangalo) to spend her life with. That's all. 5 minutes are more than sufficient for this story.
Anyway, there's no reason for Zingarina to join Tchangalo. She just does it. But actually nothing makes any sense in this movie.
No reason for anyone's behavior - unless Tony Gatlif (writer & director) wanted to offend the spectators' intellect.
No reason for so much music - unless T.G. wanted to accomplish a folk music compilation and inserted some playing between videos.
No reason for using so many languages (Romanian, Hungarian, Romales, Ukrainean, German, French, English and Italian), most of them spoken by the same people.
No reason for using a language or another in a particular situation: sometimes 2 persons talk to each other using everyone another language; Milan uses Romanian when talking to Zingarina, yet she doesn't understand Romanian; Zingarina is the only one using Italian; people use Romanian to Tchangalo, but this one uses only other languages; Tchangalo speaks French but he uses English when talking to Zingarina and so on.
Most of all, I see absolutely no reason for naming this movie "Transylvania". Only the music and the speech are specific to this land, but I don't think the title may be chosen according to them. It's like using the title "USA" for any movie with its story placed in USA.
Moreover, this movie is filled with a lot of unreal situations. For example, don't trust anything that happens in a restaurant or bar, you will never see that in real Transylvania. Don't trust anything about the church and the priest, especially the scene with the priest imprecating Tchangalo. Don't believe many other things.
The entire movie is nothing but a collection of stereotypes about Transylvania/Romania. This kind of movies used to be the focus of Romanian cinema about 15 years ago. I cannot understand how a French director could make such a movie in 2006.
And the playing is so unnatural that I suspect there was no casting.