“A Gypsy can live like a human only when he stops being a Gypsy,” says one denizen of the shantytown in Slovakia that forms the setting for Martin Sulik’s scathing drama. There’s no end to their woes: near-universal unemployment, callous doctors, drug abuse, brutal police, patronizing liberals and prejudice at every turn.
The plot takes the rough outline of “Hamlet,” as the father of 14-year-old Adam (Janko Mizigar) dies mysteriously, and Adam’s uncle marries his mother with indecent speed. The uncle is a swaggering brute who sees only one way to deal with their treatment: “The whites will never help you. Just beat the crap out of them.”
There’s no relief even in the afterlife. When Adam is visited by the ghost of his father, the man is still shabby, still smokes and tells his son that there’s a line outside God’s office. Much of the film has the palette of an ash heap, so leached of all color that a tomato soup glows like a ruby.
Adam’s few joys in life — the girl he loves, boxing lessons with a local priest — can’t soften the blows from onrushing calamity. There are moments of wry humor, and of improbable beauty, in the dust blowing over a riverbank or even the blinking light over an emergency-room door. But the overall mood of “Gypsy” is despair.