lxml parsing with python: how to with objectify

I am trying to read xml behind an spss file, I would like to move from etree to objectify.

How can I convert this function below to return an objectify object? I would like to do this because objectify xml object would be easier for me (as a newbie) to work with as it is more pythonic.

def get_etree(path_file):

    from lxml import etree

    with open(path_file, 'r+') as f:
        xml_text = f.read()     
    recovering_parser = etree.XMLParser(recover=True)    
    xml = etree.parse(StringIO(xml_text), parser=recovering_parser)

    return xml

my failed attempt:

def get_etree(path_file):

    from lxml import etree, objectify

    with open(path_file, 'r+') as f:
        xml_text = objectify.fromstring(xml)   

    return xml

but I get this error:

lxml.etree.XMLSyntaxError: xmlns:mdm: 'http://ift.tt/1BdzmYA 3/2000-02-04' is not a valid URI