Mondo (1995) Tony Gatlif
Director: Tony Gatlif | Writer: Tony Gatlif | Cast: Ovidiu Balan (Mondo), Philippe Petit (the Magician), Pierette Fesch (Thi-Chin), Schahla Aalam (the Magician's Companion), Jerry Smith (Dadi), Maurice Maurin (Giordan) and Catherine Brun (Church Soloist) | Music: Alain Weber | Genre: Drama, Foreign, Gypsy Life | Cinematography: Eric Guichard | Editor: Nicole D. V. Berckmans | Runtime: 80 Min | Format: DvdRip, Color, NTSC, Avi | Language: French, with hardcoded English subs | Country: France A fable unfolds. One summer day, a boy of about ten appears on the streets of Nice - no family, no possessions, no schooling, but with a brilliant smile. Mondo's most at home in gardens, fields, and at the seashore. The bustle of the city can seem to overwhelm him. He has good survival instincts, running from police and from threatening adults, and he is looking for a family. Over time, people come to know him - he helps out a street magician, befriends an old man who keeps doves in his suitcase, and finds a mother, herself an outsider. That smile is always at hand. Yet, no vagabond child sits well with the authorities. Can Nice keep this treasure of the spirit? IMDBSynopsis: Is it the kitschy film equivalent of a Keene
painting? Or a deeply felt allegory of innocence betrayed by an unfeeling world? Tony Gatlif's film ''Mondo,'' based on a story by J. M. G. Le Clezio, is a gorgeously photographed tear-jerker that hovers on the line between the icky and the profound. At the very least,
the movie, which follows the perambulations of a homeless Gypsy boy named Mondo (Ovidiu Balan) through the streets of Nice, France, succeeds in being a ravishing travel brochure for the Mediterranean resort city.
With his trusting brown eyes, tousled hair, and red-hooded sweatshirt, dear little Mondo is the quintessence of ragamuffin adorability drenched in pathos. And when the lost little boy approaches selected strangers and sweetly asks if they would like to adopt him, your heart goes out to him.
On his first night after wandering the streets of Nice, Mondo, whose origins are left unspecified, climbs a tree in an orchard and sleeps until he is awakened by a dogcatcher's truck. Immediately he leaps from his perch and skitters into the darkness like a frightened animal.
For the next week or two, the 10-year-old child roams the city's winding cobblestone streets nimbly foraging for food in outdoor markets, accepting handouts and making friends. Giordan (Maurice Maurin), a kindly fisherman, scratches out the letters of the alphabet on rocks and teaches the illiterate Mondo how to spell his name. Dadi (Jerry Smith), a craggy-faced beggar who carries around a pair of pet doves, tells Mondo stories and introduces him to a street magician (Philippe Petit). In return for collecting coins during outdoor performances, the magician teaches Mondo how to walk a tightwire. After a drenching rainstorm leaves the little waif shivering and feverish, he is sheltered and nursed back to health by Thi-Chin (Pierette Fesch), a wise old Vietnamese woman...
Contemplating the world through Mondo's eyes, the movie finds a shimmering beauty in every raindrop, blade of grass and speck of sand. Even a modern supermarket assumes an aura of magical bounty. Except for one encounter with a predatory man from whom Mondo runs and hides, the little boy brings out the best in people and makes them see the world fresh.
A strange magic seems to follow Mondo. One day while wandering by the rocky shore, he spies a bunch of oranges floating on the water and gathers them up. On their skins are scrawled indecipherable messages in a beautiful hieroglyphic script.
But the idyll doesn't last. Once the authorities catch up with Mondo, the spell is broken, and the Edenic world erupts in a climactic spasm of grief and despair.
Mr. Gatlif, whose film ''Latcho Drom'' presented an extravagantly romantic portrait of Gypsy music and culture, brings the same sensibility to ''Mondo,'' which could be read as a fable about Gypsy mystique in world history. Whatever else it accomplishes, ''Mondo'' visually reminds you of those rare days when the world seems to sparkle as though it were brand new.
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