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Italian for beginners (Italiensk for begyndere)

Threat advisory: Guarded - General risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives.

Screens with the Australian short film The only person in the world.

Theatrical propaganda posters

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

Film Denmark romantic comedy language school romance love

Persons of interest

Anders W Berthelsen .... Andreas
Ann Eleonora Jørgensen .... Karen
Anette Støvelbæk .... Olympia
Peter Gantzler .... Jørgen Mortensen
Lars Kaalund .... Hal-Finn
Sara Indrio Jensen .... Giulia
Elsebeth Steentoft .... Kirketjener
Rikke Wölck .... Sygeplejerske
Karen-Lise Mynster .... Kirsten
Bent Mejding .... Pastor Wredmann
Lone Scherfig .... Screenwriter
Lone Scherfig .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Awards and film festivals:

Berlin International Film Festival 2001: silver bear
Film Critics Circle of Australia 2002: Nominated: Best foreign film (non-English language)
Robert Film Festival 2001: best screenplay, best supporting actor (Peter Gantzler), best supporting actress (Ann Eleonora)
Cinematic Intelligence Agency Trenchcoat Awards 2003

Other Dogme films: The idiots, Mifune
NB: Danish and Italian languages with English language subtitles
Studios and distributors:

Palace Films

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Blah.

Italian for beginners is a bland version of Friends. Even for an art-house film it's bland. Sure, it's about ordinary people leading ordinary lives, but you get that as soon as you open your eyes in the morning. You don't pay dollars at the box office to see your own boring life reflected back at you. You go to the movies to find a window into someone else's life, someone far more interesting than yourself.

Not that it's all bad, Italian for beginners does manage to stay within the Dogme dogma while having a death on screen (Dogme doesn't allow you to have any special effects, additional lighting, set dressing, etc., so that what you see is what was there: if you want to shoot someone you have to do it with a real gun, meaning that the resulting death must be real, ie snuff) and the actors do all present people rather than characters. Lars Kaalund's aggressive romantic is delightfully psychotic and should've been made the focus of the film as his is the only character with any greatness. Hal-Finn has the potential to be the lowest of the low (cf. God's lonely man) and the threat of his fall from grace brings great drama to his life. All the others are just wandering through a self-induced banality.

You'll be hard pressed to sit through to the end of Italian for beginners if you make the effort to see it. There is very little reward for doing so.