Swing (2002)
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Reviews Counted: 6
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 2
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 0
liked it
Average Rating: 4/5
User Ratings: 563
My Rating
Movie Info
Max is on holiday at his grandmother's place in the Elzas in France. He's fascinated by the guitarplay of gipsy Miraldo. For writing letters to the social security institutes he gets guitarlessons from Miraldo. He becomes friends with Swing, a boyish gipsygirl, who shows him the nature and takes him to exuberant mucic evenings.
Feb 11, 2002 Wide
Aug 13, 2000
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All Critics (8) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (5) | Rotten (1)
Works as successfully as an ethno-musicological document as it does a love story between culturally star-crossed kids.
Top CriticVirtually the whole cast is amateur, but Gatlif knows how to get them to play lovely little vignette scenes.
A deceptively straightforward film with enough grooves and riffs to charm even the most tone-deaf viewer . . . Gatlif's film has a brisk energy and bracing passion
infectiously good-natured and bittersweet
Gatlif might have done more of a service to the Manouche by focusing on their songs, their lifestyle and their history than by overlaying the love story of Max and Swing.
A magnificent film.
Audience Reviews for Swing
Super Reviewer
Max (Oscar Copp) is first seen timidly venturing into the gypsy neighbourhood of a small Alsace town, intent on buying a guitar. He's staying with his grandmother for the summer, and has fallen for the exuberant jazz played by French gypsies since the 30s, when it was made famous by the guitarist Django Reinhardt. He meets a gypsy girl named Swing (Lou Rech) and falls in love, while taking guitar lessons from her uncle (Tchavolo Schmitt).
Director Tony Gatlif has devoted his career portraying the hardship of the European Gypsies and in this film you will find some parts with documentary feel - including one where gypsy musicians work out a synthesis of their own music with Arab and Yiddish styles... "Because your heart hasn't burned with love, because you've never been love's slave, your heart hasn't experienced the secrets of love... You will never know the secrets of the hereafter, you will never know the uniqueness of being one!"
If in your heart there is a soft spot for unspoiled music this film will be your choice! The balance of Gatlif's pictures with sounds was perfectly composed in the innocent romance between Max and Swing, played out in her family's caravan, on the industrial fringes of the town, and in the forests outside.
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- Swing (2002) (DE)
- Swing (2002) (UK)
Max (Oscar Copp) is first seen timidly venturing into the gypsy neighbourhood of a small Alsace town, intent on buying a guitar. He's staying with his grandmother for the summer, and has fallen for the exuberant jazz played by French gypsies since the 30s, when it was made famous by the guitarist Django Reinhardt. He meets a gypsy girl named Swing (Lou Rech) and falls in love, while taking guitar lessons from her uncle (Tchavolo Schmitt).
Director Tony Gatlif has devoted his career portraying the hardship of the European Gypsies and in this film you will find some parts with documentary feel - including one where gypsy musicians work out a synthesis of their own music with Arab and Yiddish styles... "Because your heart hasn't burned with love, because you've never been love's slave, your heart hasn't experienced the secrets of love... You will never know the secrets of the hereafter, you will never know the uniqueness of being one!"
If in your heart there is a soft spot for unspoiled music this film will be your choice! The balance of Gatlif's pictures with sounds was perfectly composed in the innocent romance between Max and Swing, played out in her family's caravan, on the industrial fringes of the town, and in the forests outside.