BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT (1998)

After the anarchic tumult of his sprawling 1995 Cannes prizewinner, Underground, Bosnian-born director Emir Kusturica stays away from political controversy with a bouncy, folksy farce about three generations of Gypsy men and the women who love their shiny gold teeth. Many of the participants in this warm embrace of tradition and boisterous, ethnographically rich local culture are musicians. (The soundtrack is delectable.) And most are nonprofessional actors who, under the spell of Kusturica's somewhat surrealist energy, play their assigned roles with unmannered ease and vigor. Watch for the geese who randomly flap their way into scenes like stars of an avian Where's Waldo? -- just because, in Kusturica's skillfully shaped, carnival approach to storytelling, they can. A-

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