TranSylvania Details

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[Highly rated reviewer]

The Rough Guide to pretentious claptrap

An agonisingly pretentious film about a young woman who goes to Transylvania to find her lover who was deported from France. When the reunion does not go to plan she cuts free of her friends and drifts deeper into the gypsy culture of the area. In this Balkan version of The Sheltering Sky the director doesn't miss any opportunity to add a bit of cultural colour by parading toothless old gypsies or having them strike up the band whenever there is a spare minute to fill (and there are quite a few)

Asia Argento gives it her all as the young woman fascinated by the culture but its hard to suppress the giggles when she reinvents herself as a gypsy and for some reason starts wearing gypsy skirts and scarfs, like some Euro-trash culture plunderer. Along the way she indulges in a lot of screaming and wailing (as she presumably purges herself of her western European uptightness) but its the viewer that suffers the most during this interminable film

Just for a laugh

This is a funny film. Yes, the dramatic scenes are way over-the-top, you just have to laugh. Don't take it too seriously.

If you have little patience, don't care for picturesque scenes of other cultures or just have a conventional sense of humour then this is not the movie for you.

But if you are interested in Romania, shots of life in the early post-Soviet era, in unconventional love stories and even more unconventional script then you may like it.

The music is good too