(Tony Gatlif, 1997)

Stephane's declaration "I'm not walking!" serves as a prelude to a French pop song inspired by the nomadism of gypsy life. The introductory sequence establishes the sense of irony in his willful rebellion: lost within a maze of little traveled, rural dirt roads of a foreign land in winter, he has little recourse but to keep moving on or freeze to death. Innate in this scene is the idea that rootlessness is not a "lifestyle choice" but a way of life that has been brought on by systematic homelessness, poverty, and xenophobia, as well as an entrenched tradition of individualism that has contributed to a certain degree of culturally tolerated lawlessness.

Orality of human history transfigured into soulful, rebetika-like ballads that convey tragedy and celebration of a cultural existence defined by a marginalized "native" language - repeated images of singing and dancing at weddings and around gravesites (including Stephane's makeshift burial site) reinforce this cyclicality. Music and physical expression - the desire to lose oneself in one's own body (through alcohol, dance, or sexuality) - become non-verbal surrogates for cross-cultural communication that subtly articulate moribund desperation as well as transcendent rapture.

Life as human comedy through idiosyncratic touches of whimsy and humor in the quotidian challenges the notion of alienness and exoticism.