Tony Gatlif, the maker of the musical documentary Latcho Drom, pursues the subject of gypsies into the world of fiction, in the company of an extrovert Frenchman who treks to Romania in search of a legendary folk singer named Nora Luca. The quest and the movie soon stagnate in a gypsy enclave with a Them-and-Us outlook on the world outside. (The title translates from the Rom language as Crazy Stranger.) The dwellings, the costumes, the music, the marriage rituals, and above all, the conversational shouting and hollering are convincingly exotic. There is an interesting demonstration of how to steal electricity from the wires strung overhead (gypsy ingenuity), and of how to put together a functional phonograph from scratch (French sophistication). Mostly, Gatlif is mesmerized by faces, and the time passes slowly. We come to think of the actors as real people, and perhaps come to expect less from them in the way of entertainment. The general lack of momentum fails to prepare us for the climactic lurch into racial violence. Nora Luca remains unfound. Romain Duris, Rona Hartner, Isidor Serban. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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