Italiensk for begyndere / Italian for Beginners (2000) – 3/5

Love (and death) actually Denmark style – the ones who made this were no beginners

„Italiensk for begyndere“ or „Italian for Beginners“ is a co-production between Sweden and Denmark from 2000, so this film is almost 25 years old now and if you look at the cast, the people who made this film and also the filming locations, you will realize that Danish is the dominant factor in here and it is also the language most spoken. There is a tiny bit of English as well and of course given the film’s title, we also get some Italian here and there. No major surprise. The film was Denmark’s submission to the Oscars back then, but failed to reach the nomination, still won over 20 awards, some also in America, and was nominated for another 20. This is based on a book by Maeve Binchy and her name already suggests that she does not originate from Denmark which could have explained this adaptation, but she stems from Ireland in fact. She was just a successful writer, regardless of nationalities and had several of her works adapted also in countries far away from her home. She lived to see this adaptation and I wonder what she thought of it, but death came in 2012, so also over a decade ago now. The writer of the screenplay and also at the same time the director is Lone Scherfig, one of Denmark’s most known filmmakers nowadays, especially if we look at females. There’s maybe Susanne Bier first and right afterwards it’s Scherfig. After her film here, she also made the first English-language film of her career, but that one was not really seen by too many and it was still almost a decade until „An Education“, the film that made her really famous and resulted in Oscar nominations, even one for Best Picture. Sadly not one for Alfred Molina.

And Scherfig herself has „only“ been nominated for two BAFTAs so far. She has stayed with English-language productions ever since and this also includes television series more recently, worked with some pretty famous actors too, not only Carey Mulligan. What caught my eye in her body of work is that most projects she worked on since then have been rather female-centered. At least in terms of the stuff she worked on after discontinuing Danish films. Still, with this one here, you will also find women at least as much at the center of the story as men. Maybe more. I did not count the exact screen time. Scherfig’s film here runs for over 105 minutes, including credits, so it is neither a really short nor long movie. The duration felt kinda right I would say. The cast is predominantly Danish. I will not go into detail too much about the names, but from what I know I think there are not really any actors included in here that had really big international breakthroughs in the quarter of the century since this film came out. Let alone before it. The one name that is a bit of a difference is probably Jesper Christensen as he was part of Daniel Craig’s 007 universe of course and obviously so was Mads Mikkelsen, another famous Danish actor, but he is not in this movie here. Christensen also only plays a minor character without a great deal of screen time. I did nor even recognize him. This film is another project that is associated with the concept of Dogme 95, the manifesto that Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg developed in the 1990s, even with another filmmaker mostly in charge here. I will not go into detail about this concept now, but let me say it is something that Danish film had back in the 1990s already and German film still needs in the 2020s. Badly. Good concept and I applaud them all for it, especially the two who developed the idea.

Danish cinema has been in a good place for the last over 25 years. This movie here is one entry there that includes a decent amount of comedic elements too and this is pretty much a complete exception in terms of Dogme 95. I still hesitate to call it a comedy. There is so much tragedy in here that it does not come easy, but they handled it in a way where the tragedy already strikes almost entirely in the first half. Just take the moments when we see one character’s father die and another character’s mother at the pretty much same time. Then again, with how things were before that, maybe it was even a bit making things easier for everybody involved. At least for the mother, her daughter and also the father’s daughter. The father himself perhaps not. He was also struggling, but maybe only with the way how he treated others. Even those that supported him with endless patience. And there came something really good from these deaths too, namely the two girls find out they are sisters. Or they actually learn through the mother’s death. I liked the parallel that had them both say independently from each other that they are used to getting along on their own. Finding out you have a sibling and the two of you get along well is of course much more significant than the lost illusion that you have Italian roots. Speaking of Italian tragedy, we also have the language teacher die in the first half, but this was solved then too as one of the students from the class, the best one, gets the job. So professional issues are a bit of a factor in this film as well, especially for the one character who always gets fired, but also for other characters like the hairdresser or her sister of course too. But at the center of it all, this movie is mostly about romance. They did not get too specific in terms of the priest liking one of the sisters a while after his wife died, but with the other stories they did.

We have the hairdresser and the guy with his anger issues and we have the Italian woman and the man she likes. His name is Jørgen Mortensen and with all the times you hear her say it, even never with him present, it is easy to remember the name. Almost has some cult status. I would watch a movie dealing with Jørgen Mortensen alone and maybe minor cameos from the rest of the cast from this film and with Sara Indrio Jensen playing a bigger supporting role obviously. She was really stunning and added some nice charms here altogether from my perspective. But her character could also dish out as we find out in one funny scene when she speaks Italian and the guy she talks to doesn’t. So this film was surely also among language barriers. But always in a playful manner and who can be really surprised if you look at the title of the movie. As I just talked about Indrio Jensen being a real looker, I would say that almost all the females in this film were on the beautiful side. Danish women seem to be pretty fine, but with Indrio Jensen I find it a bit sad that her career has not really turned into something great after his film. Oh well, it still does not take any of the quality away. Major focus here is on learning the Italian language, but there are also other aspects that Italians adore such as speedy cars one character has a Maserati), football (especially Juventus), ice cream and Italian cuisine in particular like the spaghetti we see towards the end when they are all united in friendship and getting closer to one another. This was a really nice idea to have the gang travel to Italy together, especially Venice. It is probably one of the two places in Italy that also interest me the most. Sicily would still be above that I guess, but I love cities with lots of water, so Venice has to happen one day.

Now, back to the movie: There was some relationship drama towards the end then, but this did not involve Jørgen Mortensen and his ragazza, but instead included the guy with the rage problems and one of the sisters as she hears one not exactly sensitive comment from him about her mother. This is solved then too nonetheless after he finally manages to apologize and the two have great sexual tension too apparently that made it easily to overcome these struggles. Did they really not only do it in this lecture room, but also there on the bed in Italy in this little alley. Hot, but not fully romantic. Romance was brought in by other characters instead on this occasion at the end as there is talk about marriage. Maybe a bit quickly, but perhaps this is how they solved the sex-begore-marriage conflict, which really wasn’t a conflict anyway. This ending there reminded me a lot for sure of the film „Love Actually“ from a few years later and I wonder if this was in a way inspired there if we look at what happens to Firth’s character in the end. Not just the idea of a romance story with somebody from another country, but how there is also a marriage proposal in the end and how the woman reveals that she does understand the man’s language a little bit at least. All this is almost too big of a coincidence. I am not saying they stole from this film here or anything. Of course, „Love Actually“ is far more harmless and there’s not supporting characters constantly dying all the time, but well we also have a wife that died before the movie with one character just like it is here. Alright, this is it then. I suggest you give this film here a go and check it out for yourself. I would not say it was great, but clearly among the films that I liked the most from this recent Danish film series at my local theater and I have seen quite a few, so it means something and maybe it could even make it to four stars out of five on rewatch. We will see. For now, I stick with three and give it a positive recommendation which was never in doubt at all since minute one. Some really cool characters in here. Don’t miss out!