| Italian For Beginners: The Movie |
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"Can anyone recommend a good Italian film, such as Cinema Paradiso, Il Postino, La Vita è Bella..."
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When was the last time a movie featured Italian lessons as part of the plot? And how often is there a movie with a title like: Italian For Beginners?!
Directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig, Italian For Beginners is a light romantic comedy, the story of six lonely singles in their 30's who pair off and travel together to Venice. The film won a Silver Bear at last year's Berlin Film Festival, broke box office records for a Danish–language film in Denmark and has been well received across Europe. According to Scherfig, "It's just a film about having no one to have pasta with and having someone to have pasta with."
Love Italian Style
Marketing for the film plays up the Italian angle. "To speak the language of love, first you have to feel it," proclaims newspaper ads, which feature the canals of Venice and a foreground image of a pair of shapely legs hanging over the edge of a gondola.
The idea of Italian lessons sprang from one of the actors' fluency in the language. The film opens in a dreary, wintery Copenhagen, where the six characters all gather weekly for the Italian lessons that give the film its name. When the Italian expatriate teacher falls ill, he is replaced by Hal–Finn, a soccer–obsessed restaurant manager whose knowledge of the language revolves principally around soccer—he wears the black–and–white colors of Italy's popular Juventus soccer team.
En Romantisk Komedie
"Italian for beginners...and love for losers." That's another tagline for the film known as Italiensk for Begyndere in its original language. The movie adheres to the rigorous aesthetic principles of the Dogme '95 Manifesto , which insist on a hand–held camera, natural light, and shooting on location to create "a fresh method of filmmaking and allows the script and improvisations to provide the spontaneity while celebrating the characters and the actor."
The novel cinematic technique might not appeal to everyone, but one thing is certain: Italian For Beginners may be the first and last time a movie gives special prominence to Italian language lessons. And with a title like that, it's an impossible treat to resist.
