Italian for Beginners (2000)

by Lone Scherfig

An Analysis

Italian for Beginners, the earliest U.S.-available feature film from Danish director/writer Lone Scherfig, is an endearing ensemble piece following the lives of six villagers in Denmark, most of whom enroll in an Italian language class. While Scherfig follows the avant-garde Dogme 95 manifesto's ten rules for stripped-down film-making, her audience soon ceases thinking of Italian for Beginners as an experimental film and becomes immersed in the film, caring for its characters.

Interim Danish-Lutheran pastor Andreas (Anders W. Berthelsen) has arrived in town to spell Pastor Wredmann (Bent Mejding), a man prone to throwing organists from balconies. Four months removed from his wife's death, soft-spoken Andreas drives an unseen-to-the-audience Mazerati to compensate. Aside from a possible life insurance payout, Andreas' source of wealth, like the car, remains concealed.  

In the town Andreas meets, Helvfin (Lars Kaalund), the hotel's loud-mouthed, misanthropic restaurant manager--a sort of humorless Basil Fawlty; Helvfin's loyal friend Jørgen Mortensen (Peter Gantzler), a woman-shy hotel clerk; Olympia (Anette Støvelbæk), a helplessly clumsy donut shop clerk who lives with and cares for her elderly father Leif; Giulia (Sara Indrio Jensen), an Italian immigrant waitress at Helvfin's hotel restaurant; and a sensuous hairdresser (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen)who cares for her ill mother.

Before pursuing this analysis, we must be familiar with the ten principles of Dogme 95 Manifesto as well as its coda:

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the image or vice-versa.
3. The camera must be handheld. Any movement or mobility attainable in the hand is permitted.
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable.
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action.
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden.
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35mm.
10. The director must not be credited.

Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste. I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a 'work', as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.

One's initial reaction might be "what a load of pretentious crap!" Italian for Beginners, the twelfth Dogme 95 film and the first from a woman, is here to surprise the skeptical.

<<<  SPOILERS BELOW  >>>

Please see the film before reading further

Jorgen (left) with Andreas 

The film can be divided into two halves. Showing or telling of half a dozen deaths, surprising perhaps for a movement whose superficial action clause disallows most if not all portrayals of murder, the first half is about introducing characters to each other and setting up the unexpected plot twist.  Due to the number of deaths, many viewers will not predict the coming twist, normally so common, predictable, and unsatisfying: that Karen/Carmen (the hairdresser) and Olympia are sisters. Prior to that, we think maybe this film will be about the challenges facing pastor Andreas in counseling the loved ones of the deceased.  

Karen and Helvfin

Giulia

After the plot twist, ~40 minutes of film remains. Unlike the later The Other Man (2008), filming a plot twist was not the sole purpose of Italian for Beginners. The characters grow closer. Relationships are built, wrecked, and reformed. Curiously, the romantic relationships do not make a lick of sense. Helvfin grievously insults Karen's sister and then her mother. Karen ignores the first insult and rewards him with desktop classroom sex. For the second offense he is punished, but not for long, and is soon rewarded with Venetian alley sex. Andreas, a sweet man, slowly pursues the clumsy and well-meaning Olympia, whose penmanship rivals the finest kindergartner. Last, the 40-something, boring, and kind Jorgen, who speaks limited Italian, successfully proposes to the gorgeous, 20-something, Roman Catholic Italian Giulia who understands but speaks limited Danish. Giulia, possibly because of her language barrier, or possibly because the filmmaker saw her as "the immigrant woman" is by far the least developed of the six main characters.  None of these couples ought to be together, particularly Helvfin and Karen, but with death swirling about, they need each other. We as viewers do not much care that the couples don't seem to fit. The sweet emotions that Italian for Beginners elicits overrides most logical objections to the odd couplings.

Karen and Helvfin open a rollaway mattress

Using each setting as-is (as Dogme 95 requires), with its on-site props, lends this film healthy tones of verisimilitude. When Karen is tossed about on the precarious classroom desk, we understand how real that moment feels. When we see an actual, working bakery with all its accouterments, stains, and evidence of use, we notice that realism arrives more effectively only with a documentary film that uses real employees instead of actors. When Karen and Helvfin open a rollaway mattress in said Venetian alleyway, we smile with satisfaction, knowing that bed was found there when cast and crew arrived.

Aside from the Dogme 95 requirements of a 35mm color film handheld camera, the director does have the freedom of lens type (zoom, fixed, wide-angle, fisheye, etc.) In the spirit of Dogme 95, Scherfig eschews anything but a fixed, typical lens or lenses--anything that would add a drop of "artistry." Once arriving in Venice, Scherfig seems to cautiously select properly-lit, cinema-friendly settings, including the lovely restaurant dining room which has a handsome look and remarkably acceptable ambient sound. Scherfig seems to wait for the most attractive levels of sunlight to film certain exterior scenes, especially a pre-dinner twilight scene that glows indigo. 

Scherfig bends the spirit of the rules for setting. She amuses us by using classroom doors that, in the real world, almost certainly lead to closets, but, within the film, serve as classroom entrances.  

Scherfig, comforming to self-imposed Dogme 95 creative limitations, is still an artist--one who has crafted a lovely, touching film.