KENEDI SE ZENI / KENEDI IS GETTING MARRIED (2007)

Serbian director Zelimir Zilnik with a second look at the Romany life of incorrigible Kenedi Hasani (first & third entries not seen here), currently squatting in Germany, but about to be deported back to whatever might pass for a homeland.   Filmed in near documentary style, and usually mislabeled as such, it charts the fascinating, if unknowable mind-set of this hard-wired Roma (or Gypsy as they were once called*) as he figures out how to reach his next immediate goal.  At the moment, that would be paying off an enormous debt to loan sharks on a house meant for his family.  With as much patience & foresight as an exotic fish in a bowl, Kenedi still knows the €10/day he makes tearing down dilapidated buildings is getting him nowhere.  On the other hand, sex work yields two to four times that amount in a few pleasantly spent hours.  And with changing mores and societal liberalizations opening up new markets as he’s no longer restricted to middle-aged widows, but now sees opportunity in wealthy gays in need of studly company.  Even marriage now possible!  Kenedi offering a full five year plan to bait interest.  (Four years & eleven months longer than Kenedi has ever planned ahead.)  A job of work, a scam, a relationship of convenience; all the same to him.  But time may be running out, and not just from imminent deportation.  He’s also on the wrong side of 30.  Some teeth missing, no longer able to perform all night long and be ‘up’ for morning duty.  (Note explicit, if non-erotic sex scenes.)  And at a farewell dinner, before heading to Turkey, male & female marks collide.  Pretty amazing stuff in here, with Kenedi Hasani as unselfconscious/uninhibited a screen presence for Zilnik as Joe Dallesandro was for Warhol/Morrissey in FLESH/’68, though active rather than passive; and Zelnik pulling a real narrative structure out of captured shards of film & unplanned events.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *The collection UP IN THE OLD HOTEL by The New Yorker’s Joseph Mitchell’s has his unmatched series on how ‘Gypsy’ society played the system with scams & schemes in the ‘40s.  You won’t find Roma enclaves re-tinning copper pans any more (more's the pity), but much hasn’t changed at all.  Still as insular as some religious sect.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hollywood tried to sell KING OF THE GYPSIES/’78, from a Peter Maas book, as a sort of GODFATHER story.  Now mostly of interest for not making Eric Roberts a big star.