When Life is Bigger Than Desire
Acclaimed director Tony Gatlif pairs Asia Argento and Birol Ünel for his new feature Transylvania. Carol Murphy talked to him about the film, his approach to working with actors, and the importance of music.

Zingarina is caught in the violence of limerence. Her emotions are trapped in the ebb and flow of diasporas, the shifting boundaries and the enormity of history, while she travels with a friend across Romania in an obsessive search of the man she loves, the father of her unborn child. When she finds him she is rejected and is subsequently swept away by a vagrant’s lifestyle and events which are bigger than her desire and her floundering ego. She struggles until she can cut herself off from her past, address the possibilities of what life can offer her, and finally accept happiness when she meets Tchangalo on her journey through Romania.

Who else but Asia Argento could throw herself with such abandon into the role of Zingarina? Writer/director Tony Gatlif has the knack of choosing possibly the sexiest actors on screen today; her sparring partner is Birol Ünel, whom we can’t forget from Fatih Akin’s Head On. And yes, Argento and Ünel are a pleasure to watch together – funny, combative, aggressive, energetic and iconic – as Gatlif maps the emotional and physical journey of Zingarina and Tchangalo through the spectacular extremes of the Romanian landscape.

Gatlif is a director who seems to live the life of his characters while directing films, in that the directing process is a passionate pleasure for him. This is very obvious when watching a film like Transylvania, displayinghis use of what appears to be a spontaneous film language. On the other hand, Gatlif’s superstition means he is unable to sit in on the screening of his films after they are completed. He laments that he won’t watch them for up to 10 years after they are made. After the difficulty of the editing process he says goodbye to them as he pursues further projects. As a director he has amassed a body of work which has focused since 1981 on the Gypsy people of Western Europe, from whom he is descended.

Born in Algiers in 1948, Gatlif moved to France after the Algerian War of Independence. He worked there as an actor until directing his first film, La tête en ruines, in 1975. In 2004 he won the best Director Award at Cannes for Exiles, starring Romain Duris, while Transylvania premiered at the festival in 2006.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 117.