Gadjo Dilo - 1998 - 6/10
AKA - The Crazy Stranger

Young French man wanders the Romanian countryside, cassette Walkman in his pack.
He seeks Nora Luca, gypsy folk singer, all but unknown in the west.
Colorful story throws him into the Romany world, where he is perceived as a curio.
The fact that he knows only a few Romany phrases and NO Romanian, cast him as the rube.
Fortunately (and fortune bears two faces), one girl speaks French.
To term their relationship highly charged would be understating it.
Film does not gloss over the tensions between normal Romanians, and the gypsies.

Note: I have been to Romania a few times.
I watched a pack work a set of hustles in Timișoara (in McDonalds) one evening. (Similar scenes had played out where I worked, when Traveler kids “shopped.”)
Mock fights, girls removing tops to adjust their bras – if they are wearing one to begin with, while a quiet mule drifts from table to table, taking cellphones, lighters, any item not nailed down.
I never saw any of the girls wearing traditional garb, as in this film.