Italian for Beginners (2000)
A very sweet, romantic, warm movie about a bunch of slightly lonely, slightly misfit Danes who meet through an Italian class. There is a dysfunctional church (probably not uncommon in Denmark), a quaint bakery, a hairdresser's, and so on, adding to a kind of small town reality where everything has conviction.
As much as this is all good--and it is good, if not great--it's also decided low budget in a kind of clunky way. The acting is fine--people are themselves, I suppose, or like fairly normal people--and the story line is cute and clever. But the filming and direction borders on a really good home movie. It's a 97 minute affair of course, and doesn't feel thrown together or amateurish, merely so simple and plain, visually, it becomes conspicuous.
But if you can just enjoy the interpersonal lives, and some budding love affairs (and who can't), and a final section in Venice, you might find it a sweet joy.
A very sweet, romantic, warm movie about a bunch of slightly lonely, slightly misfit Danes who meet through an Italian class. There is a dysfunctional church (probably not uncommon in Denmark), a quaint bakery, a hairdresser's, and so on, adding to a kind of small town reality where everything has conviction.
As much as this is all good--and it is good, if not great--it's also decided low budget in a kind of clunky way. The acting is fine--people are themselves, I suppose, or like fairly normal people--and the story line is cute and clever. But the filming and direction borders on a really good home movie. It's a 97 minute affair of course, and doesn't feel thrown together or amateurish, merely so simple and plain, visually, it becomes conspicuous.
But if you can just enjoy the interpersonal lives, and some budding love affairs (and who can't), and a final section in Venice, you might find it a sweet joy.