KORKORO

France, 2009, 107 minutes, Colour.
Marc Lavoine, Marie Josee Croze, James Thieree.
Directed by Tony Gatliff.

Writer-director, Tony Gatlif (born in Algeria with a gypsy background and settled in France) has developed a cinema career of making arresting films with gypsy stories, themes of wandering peoples, and a focus on their music, Latcho Drom, Gadjo Dilo, Exils, Princes... Korkoro is his latest, but it is different from his other films insofar as it takes us back into World War II history.

In Vichy France there was legislation against the gypsies and their way of life, especially preventing them from moving around the countryside. As one of the bigoted and fascist characters says of them in the film, they are considered as vermin. With their poor reputation for being wandering thieves and scoundrels, they did not elicit a great deal of sympathy from the French countrysiders. Gatlif ensures that they do receive some sympathy from his audience.

Korkoro is the name the gypsies give to a little boy, an orphan, who follows them and wants to join them. He has been in an orphanage and fostered but has suffered and is hungry. The gypsies are wary but let him tag along. When the gypsies arrive at a fruit-picking destination, they are under scrutiny from the French authorities as well as the German officials in the town.

The film shows the harshness of the treatment towards the gypsies, something they don’t understand, especially as they say the war is not their war. The authorities check their documents and use them against them. They are rounded up and interned. The main gypsy character audiences can identify with is the mentally-limited Taloche, a genial clown character – played with some miming allusions by James Thieree to his grandfather (he is the son of Victoria Chaplin).

A sympathetic vet, who is the mayor of the town, befriends them and also takes Korkoro into his house and cares for him. The other sympathetic character is Miss Lundi who works in the town hall office, working with documents, but who also teaches in the local school. She makes an appeal to the gypsies to better their situation by learning to read and write. She gets mixed results. However, she is also part of the resistance and both she and the mayor are arrested and tortured.

The mayor sells an ancestral property for a peppercorn price and it is made available to the gypsies, according to the law, and they could stay for the duration of the war, something they find too difficult. Korkoro always helps them. Then, as the situation deteriorates, he pleads to go with them. The concentration camps become a deathly prospect.

Throughout the film, Gatlif is able to introduce sequences of song and dance and the exhilaration of gypsy music.

2010 saw a number of films which took audiences back to the 1940s and occupied France and Vichy France, Gainsbourg, Sarah’s Key along with Korkoro and the 2009 L’ Armee du Crime. An opportunity to remember some hidden aspects of the war experience and to learn more about prejudice and persecution.

1. The title, the overtones of freedom? The name for Little Claude?

2. Tony Gatliff and his work, the background of gypsy life, music? His series of films about gypsies?

3. France in 1942, the French countryside, the fields and crops, the towns? Offices? The farms? The internment camp? The tone of colour, the atmosphere of the war? Occupied France?

4. Gypsy history, the explanations? The reputation? Roaming, settling, working the crops, going on the road, tinkers and sales, mending? Music and dance? Begging? The locals being suspicious of the gypsies?

5. The impact of World War Two, the Vichy government, the legislation against the gypsies and their wandering? Their having to have their documents? Talouche and his mockery of the document and stamp? The officials? The issue of the house and ownership, the gypsies settling there? Their moving, the renewed application for documents, their failure, the internment? The loss of freedom? The prospect of the concentration camps?

6. The French authorities, the police, the gentry and their exploiting the gypsies, calling them the vermin of the world? The Nazis and their occupation? The mayor, the teacher and their sympathies? The ordinary people hostile to the gypsies?

7. The gypsy characters, men and women, children, the leadership, the variety of attitudes towards staying and moving, towards the authorities? Their reaction to the authorities?

8. The mayor, as a vet, healing the German’s dog? His life, work? The horses and their collapse, his tending to them? Seeing Claude, inviting him to the house, caring for him? Interaction with the authorities, the selling of the house, setting it up for the gypsies? His being arrested, tortured? Seeing the dog that he had healed? His relationship with Miss Lundi?

9. Miss Lundi, seeing her at work in the office, Talouche’s behaviour? Her teaching, the children at the school, the classes, her going to meet the gypsies, trying to persuade them to come to learn to read and write? Some of them coming, the issue of the biscuits? School etiquette, their coming and going? Her relationship with the mayor, her supporting the gypsies, arrest, torture?

10. Claude, the orphan, following the gypsies, their letting him stay? The mayor finding him, giving him a new life, settling in the house? His meeting the gypsies, going to the camp, with the food? Joys and sorrows? After the arrest of the mayor, following the gypsies and trying to persuade them to take him with them?

11. Talouche, the clown, in the group, fooling, the episode and the stamp in the office? His love of nature? Bonding with Claude? Going to the school? The internment, not finding it easy, getting out, the pursuit, his death?

12. Gypsy music, the people asking him to play at the dance? To play for the hens and their laying?

13. The fate of the gypsies, the experience of war and internment? After the war?