Customer Rating: Summary: calm down, Asia Comment: The story of Transylvania is very simple. A strange French/Italian (who knows?) has come to Transylvania looking for her gypsy lover who was deported from France. She is pregnant and she's brought along her friend, who is slightly less strange. The Gypsy theme continues as the girl, called Zingarina, goes in search of freedom, love and err...doing nothing, wandering through the villages, bars and country roads of Transylvania.
What really irritates me about this film is not how oversimplistic the Romanian/Gypsy way of life is portrayed but how absolutely, incredibly annoying Asia Argento's character is. She wails and screams her way through at least half the film so that she's merely being hysterical in her mellow moments (and people accuse Al Pacino of overacting). Personally, her performance puts a dampner on the whole thing.
Otherwise, what you have is a beautifully shot film with some standout moments (see the one-man party) but a fantasy of sorts. Like Tony Gatlif's previous work, Transylvania yearns for the spiritual freedom of Gypsies (or Roma) which seems to be found by music, alcohol, pain and not caring what anyone else thinks. Just don't expect to learn anything about Transylvania.
Bogdan Tiganov - author of The Wooden Tongue Speaks: Romanians: Contradictions and Realities Customer Rating: Summary: No vampires, but Asia Argento. Comment: I discovered this 2006 French drama on late-night cable television. I was instantly and totally mesmerized. Transylvania stars Asia Argento, which is reason enough to see this film. For starters, Asia is the daughter of actress Daria Nicolodi and Italian horror film genius, Dario Argento (Suspiria). (Her father reportedly read Asia his horror film scripts as bedtime stories when she was a child.) She started her acting career at age 9, and is known for her roles in George A. Romero's Land of the Dead, The Stendhal Syndrome, and Marie Antoinette. She also stars in Catherine Breillat's period drama, Une vieille maîtresse (An Old Mistress), which I am eager to see. Asia is a fascinating actress, fluent in several languages, and known to be an introvert and agoraphobic.
French-Algerian director Tony Gatlif's Transylvania is not a vampire movie (as one might assume). Rather, it is a beautiful rogues' gallery of memorable scenes, local color, multiple languages, lively Romanian music, frenetic dancing, dazzling cinematography, multi-cultural romance on the open road, intriguing landscapes, and seductive sights and sounds. It tells the story of a beautiful, sensual, free-spirited young woman, Zingarina (Argento), who travels to Transylvania in search of her lover, Milan (Marco Castoldi), who left her in southern France without explanation. She is two months pregnant with Milan's child. When she arrives in Transylvania with her friend Marie (Amira Casar) and interpreter Luminitsa (Alexandra Beaujard), Zingarina finds Milan during a gypsy-pagan festival. He rejects her. This prompts her to leave her two friends, her past, and Transylvania behind with a traveling loner named Tchangalo (Birol Ünel), in search of a new life without ties or borders. This is a fascinating film that deserves a cult following.
G. Merritt
Customer Rating: Summary: good asia argento film if your a fan Comment: very fresh film, music was osome , landscapes snowly weather and the cold really added to the actors story to tell, and yes the drinking and the drunk scenes were quite funny, getting drunk and smashing bottles on your head scene was the best.
