Angelo My Love

The genesis of this film occurred when Duvall overheard an eight-year-old boy on a New York street having a lover's tiff with an adult woman and saying, 'If you don't love me no more, Patricia, I swear I'm gonna go back to Philadelphia'. The boy turned out to be a member of NY's little-known gypsy community, and Duvall personally financed this dramatised film about their lives, using one of his favourite films, Ken Loach's Kes, as a model. The thrust of the story depends upon the rites of passage of this boy into an early adulthood, the possession of an important gypsy ring stolen by some less scrupulous members of the clan, and the eventual necessity for Angelo to choose which world, the gypsy or the wider one, he wishes to inhabit. But the film's chief joy is its patient, unobtrusive observation of a culture out of synch with surrounding modern America. CPea.