"Italian for Beginners", Danish with subtitles, has the premise of an Italian class along with a temporary pastor in the town as the starting point for a series of funerals and romances between a disparate group of people in a small village outside Copenhagen.
The scenes are set realistically in the Dogma 95 model which has been endlessly written about and which can detract from this simple film if one gets caught up in the methodology. I chose not to.
The movie takes a gentle hold after about fifteen minutes of dither, I never knew where it was going and why everything (plot, acting, script) was so murky -one aspect of Dogma philosophy is to shoot everything on video. But after that stretch of settling in, it charms and captivates.
The characters are well drawn and reveal a complexity over the course of the film that is not evident in the beginning.
I found myself smiling at the ending, shot in Venice, where the unhokey multiple romances get a gentle baptism with some nice little surprises laid along the way and a lot of funny, tender moments. 7 out of 10.
The scenes are set realistically in the Dogma 95 model which has been endlessly written about and which can detract from this simple film if one gets caught up in the methodology. I chose not to.
The movie takes a gentle hold after about fifteen minutes of dither, I never knew where it was going and why everything (plot, acting, script) was so murky -one aspect of Dogma philosophy is to shoot everything on video. But after that stretch of settling in, it charms and captivates.
The characters are well drawn and reveal a complexity over the course of the film that is not evident in the beginning.
I found myself smiling at the ending, shot in Venice, where the unhokey multiple romances get a gentle baptism with some nice little surprises laid along the way and a lot of funny, tender moments. 7 out of 10.