Italian for Beginners (2000)

Had the chance to watch this on DVD last night and was completely taken by surprise. First,the most obvious unusual thing,the movie is on video-tape.Much like a PBS documentary or one of those more serious "reality" shows. Maybe a slight touch of foreign country soap-opera's as well.It should be no surprise that I thought,"As a film this can't possibly work in terms of drama or humor",since it's not on standard celluloid used in almost all films. Happy to say I was wrong. Every main character is very well fleshed out and very engaging. The females are fair to very strong characters and the men are very differing in character but none are caricatures or stereotypical movie males,thankfully. I felt the idea of all coming together because of a class in learning Italian was a fresh idea as well,including their eventual trip to Vienna itself. Quite simply,ten stars..... and I know I may just check this out more than once. (END)

The Dogme 95 manifesto was a call for a return to a naturalistic style of film-making; but the first film made according to its principles, Lars von Trier's 'The Idiots', was a playful attack on every convention of film in spite of its basic technical nature. 'Italian for Beginners' is more like what one might expect a Dogme film to resemble, if one hadn't seen 'The Idiots' first: a portrait of everyday life, told without artificial over-embellishment. And it works. On one had, this is a story of the misery of lonely people living in a grey northern town; on the other, the shape of a potential happy ending is visible quite early on. And yet there's something believable in the performances, as well as a sly sense of humour, that enables the movie to transcend its modest proposition and genuinely warm the heart, a story of ordinary people regaining their confidence in life after hard times. If every film was like this one, you might find yourself longing for a bit more ambition; but in a world full of empty noise, it's nice to see a movie whose director seemed to care about making his film ring true.

Usually i can't stand romance movies, they always tend to exaggerate everything about love and relationships in a way that i just plain stupid. But this movie manages to keep a nice pace and great cinematography. The movie built up my expectations for every minute and manages to fulfill them, and this is just incredible.This is the best danish film i have seen since Festen (The Celebration), i have seen a lot of danish movies but "Festen" and "Italiensk for begyndere" stand out in a remarkable way.If you liked this movie a would like to recommend movies from from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson, movies like "Fucking Åmal" and "Tillsammans" for example.

When I went to see Lars Von Trier's "Breaking the waves" years ago I coined a new film-genre: the Guilt-Flick. Since then, I only watched Dogme95 films to analyse their technique, because I have researched how to apply their "10 commandments" in depth at university. I am a micro-budget filmmaker myself - although I now Dogme95 isn't about budget. It can take a lot of money to look that cheap! Some of my Scandinavian friend attribute the grim atmosphere of the Dogme95 guilt-flick to the Puritanical influence. I can relate to the desire to show "life as it is" as a rebellion against special effects-laden Hollywood films, but the amount of unhappiness shown in the first half of this film nearly puts you off watching the rest of it. It is still a very gentle, beautifully edited and shot story (especially compared to the atrocious "Kingdom"), and the actors are talented and obviously well directed. (SPOILER COMING UP!) When the Italian classes lose their teacher, the local council gives the job to Halvfinn, who likes football so much he doesn't even know that "Penalty" in Italian is "Punizione" and not "Punire". What really baffles me is that there is an Italian girl in the village, Giulia, whose Italian is genuine (I know, I am Italian myself!), but she won't get the teaching job!!!! My partner objected that she couldn't get the job because she spoke little Danish, but so did the old Italian teacher. He is only on screen for a few minutes but would still drive you mad with stereotypes: he is trying it on with anything remotely female, his name is Marcello (yeah, like Mastroianni in "La Dolce Vita" and his surname is Mercoledi', Wednesday! Is this a clever pun on Robinson Crusoe or they couldn't be bothered looking up a more realistic-sounding Italian name? And Giulia - this is 2000, and she is praying (praying!!!!) that the man she fancies will like her new hair. That's ridiculous, and offensive for Italian girls in general and all the more so for the ones that chose to be religious. Giulia's character is some leftover from a 1950s romance, and should have no place in a story that strives so hard to be true to life. And as for Catholics not having sex before they're married... see "1950s romance" above! It is still a beautiful film, that manages to combine tragedy and comic moments in true melodrama style (the character of the old Pastor is fantastic!) and I recommend it to anyone who doesn't like the "exploding cars" film genre (you all know what I mean).