Transylvania is a European road movie that was written and directed by Tony Gatlif and premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. It stars Asia Argento, Birol Unel, Amira Casar, Alexandra Beaujard and Marco Castoldi. It’s a picaresque tale with no discernible point, other than perhaps to highlight some of the problems faced by Romanies in Eastern Europe. It makes perfect sense for a road movie to feature Romany characters because their lifestyle is naturally suited to that genre but this, to my admittedly limited knowledge, is the first such film.
Argento plays Zingarina, a pregnant young woman who is trying to locate her Romanian boyfriend Milan whom she has not seen since he was deported from France some time before. Accompanying her on this quest are her best friend Marie and an interpreter, Luminitsa. They make their way through Eastern Europe in a battered old car, occasionally stopping to enjoy the local colour in the form of music, dancing and drinking. Eventually tracking him down to a small town in Transylvania, Zingarina is distraught to learn that Milan was not deported at all but ran out on her (and his own impending fatherhood) because he doesn’t love her. This prompts a long dark night of the soul, as Zingarina gets blind drunk and dances with abandon ’til dawn. The following morning Marie promptly pays off Luminitsa and arranges tickets for herself and Zingarina to get back to France but before the plan can be put into action Zingarina abandons her friend and disappears. She hooks up first with a young orphaned girl and then, reluctantly, with Tchangalo – a garrulous Romany hawker whom she had briefly met earlier in the trip. Together the couple spend the next few months aimlessly travelling around Transylvania by various means until one day Zingarina goes into labour.
Anyone seeing the name Argento in a film called Transylvania can be forgiven for thinking they’re in for a vampire movie and I must confess that, knowing nothing about this film at the outset, that’s what I thought too. But nothing could be further from the truth; in this film at any rate Gatlif has zero interest in Castle Dracula and actually seems intent on enlightening us as to the realities of life in modern Romania. And frankly the reality appears pretty grim, at least at first glance. To say Romania doesn’t seem geared towards the tourist would be something of an understatement but, gradually, the film begins to reveal the region’s charm. The film pulls a neat trick in ending Zingarina’s quest within the first twenty minutes, leaving her and the viewer confused and disoriented. However, rather than hot foot it out of the country with her tails between her legs, Zingarina goes native – adopting Romany dress and embracing the country and its people.
Asia Argento is one of the most fearless and least inhibited actresses around at the moment and she’s great in this, completely throwing herself into the role. If she’s not falling down drunk, she’s dancing and taking her dress off; if she’s not begging her lover to take her back, she’s kick-boxing in the middle of the road in the middle of winter; and if she’s not going into labour in the back of a car, she’s cycling up hill while an elderly hitchhiker gets a lift. Argento flirted with Hollywood briefly a few years ago but I reckon she’s too free-spirited and the parts too ordinary for her to be a success over there; in fact, she’s probably too free-spirited to ever be a major star even in European cinema. Striking without being conventionally beautiful, I reckon she’s just too full-on a human being to be much more than a brilliant cult figure.
Once you get your head round the idea of what this film is it’s frequently engrossing; the photography is excellent, the locations bleakly beautiful and the music and dancing bewitching. The characters are probably just a bit too larger-than-life for the film to be social realism but they’re engaging people and the struggles they have are recognisably human problems: love, pain, money, happiness, hunger. It’s also one of those rare films where, for the most part, rather than wanting to blow up everything and everyone in sight, people just want to be happy and help each other, and it’s all the better for that.
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