Mondo

Tony Gatlif's first film since his lyrical and innovative Latcho Drom is about a 10-year-old Gypsy orphan boy (Ovidu Balan, an actual Romanian Gypsy whom Gatlif rescued from deportation) who wanders the streets and shores of Nice savoring the beauty of nature and humankind and in general brightening the lives of all those he encounters. That might sound like a Hallmark version of The Little Prince crossed with Dondi; in practice, however, Mondo and his smile are hard to resist. Some of Gatlif's images do wallow overlong in the realm of sweetness and light: beatifying homelessness as freedom, and posing regimented authority as the bad guy, Mondo finds little that is sinister or dark in the life of the streets. Still, this is an orphan well worth adopting.Opens Friday at the Cable Car.

-- Peter Keough