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Gypsy king >>
Tchavolo Schmitt shines by MARK SLUTSKY
Gatlif, with Latcho Drom, Gadjo Dilo and the more recent Vengo, has made a career of these kinds of movies, which serve up colourful slices of European exotica. But it’s not as though he doesn’t have good material to work with, and Swing’s best moments come when the vibrancy of the culture he’s examining (in this case, gypsy Manouche culture and music, à la Django Reinhardt) stand out against the mundanity of the filmmaking. Set in Strasbourg, the film tells the rather loose story of Max (Oscar Copp), a blond little French boy on holiday at his grandmother’s fenced-in mansion. Our kid protagonist becomes interested in the virtuoso guitar playing of Miraldo (Tchavolo Schmitt), who lives in a little gypsy community on what seems to be the outskirts of town. Copp decides to take up the guitar, swapping his reading and writing skills for Schmitt’s instruction and checking out the titular Swing (Lou Rech), an androgynous, spritely girl from Schmitt’s circle. So, as it tends to go in these movies, we enter the foreign culture through the eyes of a whitey, Copp, who is someone the audience can presumably identify with more. It’s an old device and it feels pandering, but the music itself is interesting enough to overlook the sometimes clumsy filmmaking. Swing is shot in a sort of semi-loose, faux-freewheeling style that never really resolves itself; it’s apparently meant to look improvisational and doc-like, but it comes across as stiff and deliberate. Schmitt himself, though, is great. A well-known guitar player in the world of Manouche, he’s an expert musician and it’s always enjoyable watching him and his various musical partners work their magic. Gatlif thankfully allows the musical scenes to play out for long stretches, and while they’re the best part of the film, you might be better advised to simply pick up the soundtrack. : Swing opens Friday, July 12 >> Movie Listings |
Like
a brightly packaged world beat CD compilation, Tony Gatlif’s Swing
is a genial, non-threatening introduction to a colourful and oppressed
culture. And while it has some real strengths, the movie also carries
an uncomfortable, overly-cute air of cultural tourism to it.