Lessons for the lonely

>> Italian for Beginners does Dogme, gently

by MARK SLUTSKY

Another Dogme film, another group of screwed-up Danes on video. Lone Scherfig’s Italian for Beginners resembles its predecessors in many ways, but takes a much lighter, more romantic tone than The Celebration or The Idiots. There’s still a lot of the dark humour emblematic of the films that sport the Dogme certificate, but Scherfig definitely relaxes the tone.

The movie’s title refers to an Italian class at a community centre which each of the film’s six main characters attend at some point or another. They’re all connected in various other ways: Andreas (Anders W. Berthelsen) is a widowed pastor who’s recently arrived at a new congregation, staying in the hotel where both Jorgen Mortensen (Peter Gantzler), a clerk, Hal-Finn (Lars Kaalund), a short-tempered restaurant manager, and waitress Giulia (Sara Indrio Jensen) work. They all get their hair cut at Karen’s (Ann Eleonora Jorgensen) salon, and buy their pastries at the bakery staffed by clumsy Olympia (Anette Stovelbaek).
Solitude and aimlessness eventually lead all of them to the Italian class, and they use it as a pretext to pursue their various romantic interests. It’d take too long to summarize the little web of relationships (no room for a flow chart here), but everyone’s pretty lonely and looking for companionship whether they realize it or not. This leads to a lot of light comedy, and some heavy stuff, too—death, madness, heartbreak—but it’s all handled with a pretty compassionate touch.
Does Italian for Beginners succeed as a movie? Yes. Is it kind of boring at times as well? Sadly, yes. While pleasant enough, it starts to drag on a little by the halfway mark. It’d be helpful, for instance, to see some more stuff happening outside, you know, with extras and everything; the movie’s got a handful of locations it uses over and over again, and it starts to get claustrophobic. Though it must be hard to shoot street scenes with the resources allowed under Dogme strictures, the movie starts to feel like it takes place in an abandoned convention centre. There’s not much else to find fault with, specifically, but Italian for Beginners leaves us feeling like something’s missing. :

Italian for Beginners opens Friday, Feb. 8