MOVIE REVIEW : Braiding Strands of Charm, Cruelty in Dramatic ‘Gypsies’

In the singular world of Yugoslav director Emir Kusturica, brides float in the air, houses levitate and knives find their victims telekinetically. In the world of his Yugoslav Gypsies, brides are for stealing, friends for swindling, strangers for victimizing and children are to be bought and sold like bags of onions.

Braid these strands together and you have “Time of the Gypsies” (at the AMC Century 14), a turbulent, mesmerizing contemporary melodrama about the undoing of innocence. Wildly ambitious, it’s nearly as disorderly and spontaneous and irrepressible as its Gypsies themselves, and at times as manipulative. No matter; the sleight-of-hand holds, keeping us fascinated if not enchanted by the life and hard times of its ill-starred young hero.

It’s painful to watch naive young Perhan acquire a lifetime’s worth of mistrust and venality in a few years. If you follow Kusturica’s thesis, though, it’s an unavoidable pattern. His film is bracketed front and back with wailing brides, one howling because her husband of less than 24 hours is paralytically drunk, the other screaming murderously because her husband of less than an hour has been stabbed to death. Cycles within cycles, Kusturica suggests, unalterable as the tides. The final cycle will be played out by a 4-year-old child at the very end of the film, leaving no doubt that this Gypsy mythology will keep repeating itself.

At the opening, Kusturica, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gordan Mihic , drops us off inside the ramshackle house of a Gypsy grandmother, and we’re not outside this eccentric society until two hours and 20 minutes later. It has the dislocation of “Through the Looking Glass.”

The house is Perhan’s grandmother’s, a healer, She’s raised Perhan and his little sister Danira by her own honorable rules, which already sets them apart from 98% of their village. Perhan is an idealistic, hilariously ugly teen-ager who turns almost beautiful as we get to know him.

He already has a sweetheart, Azra, who has inked his name under her breast and to whom he is pledged. But at least in his younger moments, it’s possible that he’s equally fond of his enormous turkey, his one constant companion. (Davor Dujmovic, who plays the range of Perhan’s experience with such depths, is one of the exceptions in this largely nonprofessional cast. He has virtually grown up under Kusturica’s lenses, since he played one of the two sons in the director’s prize-winning “When Father Was Away on Business” four years ago.)

When Ahmed, the richest man in their community, volunteers to pay for medical attention for Danira’s crippled leg, brother and sister leave in his overloaded car, bound for the hospital. Unsurprisingly, this offer from a man gleaming with brilliantine and gold chains is not on the up-and-up. Brother and sister are separated and, although Perhan never stops looking for Danira, he drops with astonishing speed into a life of worldliness and corruption.

It’s an unbearably vicious world. Making sorties back and forth into Italy, Ahmed and his band keep a retinue of pregnant women and young children virtual slaves, turning them out on the streets each morning to beg and shaking them down every night. The leadership of the gang passes back and forth, more violently each time. (Bora Todorovic, the film and theater professional who plays Ahmed, does so with charm layering his cruelty.)

But as he spins this morbid chapter, Kusturica’s imagination lavishes the scene with dreams that might have wafted from South American magic realism, a literature he is steeped in. Bridal veils waft by significantly, a baby is delivered from a mother floating horizontally like a magician’s assistant, even a gas pump seems like a magic totem.

Perhan returns home only near the end of his odyssey, after his experiences have made him closed and cynical. In one of the film’s most haunting moments, his grandmother asks why he won’t believe the truth even when it’s said by those closest to him. The answer is poignant, the crux of Gypsy credo: “Since I started lying myself, I don’t believe anything.”

“Time of the Gypsies” (rated R for its violence, nudity and adult themes) is a sprawling, hallucinatory experience, with gleefully naturalistic performances by all its enormous cast. Since it’s virtually impossible to pick out the few professionals involved, praise should be lavished on Kusturica or his Gypsies or both. Both seems only fair, with a particularly deep bow to Ljubica Adzovic’s principled grandmother.

‘TIME OF THE GYPSIES ‘

A Columbia Pictures presentation of a Forum Film, Sarajevo production. Co-producers Mirza Pasic, Harry Saltzman. Director Emir Kusturica. Camera Vilko Filac. Editor Andrija Zafranovic. Music Goran Bregovic. Scenic design Miljen Kljakovic. Costumes Mirjana Ostojic. Sound Ivan Zakic, Srdan Popovic. Screenplay Gordan Mihic, Kusturica. With Davor Dujmovic, Ljubica Adzovic, Elvira Sali, Husnija Hasimovic, Sinolicka Trpkova, Bora Todorovic.

Running time: 2 hour, 22 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).