Lack of good storyline.

Good movie but grossly overrated

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Had the chance to watch this on DVD last night and was completely taken by surprise. First,the most obvious unusual thing,the movie is on video-tape.Much like a PBS documentary or one of those more serious "reality" shows. Maybe a slight touch of foreign country soap-opera's as well.It should be no surprise that I thought,"As a film this can't possibly work in terms of drama or humor",since it's not on standard celluloid used in almost all films. Happy to say I was wrong. Every main character is very well fleshed out and very engaging. The females are fair to very strong characters and the men are very differing in character but none are caricatures or stereotypical movie males,thankfully. I felt the idea of all coming together because of a class in learning Italian was a fresh idea as well,including their eventual trip to Vienna itself. Quite simply,ten stars..... and I know I may just check this out more than once. (END)

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 movie for the soul, where every character is built carefully and has it's own sensibility. The dialog and the story are well constructed, i did not knew were the time went. In some moment in the movie you know how it is going to end but it's a joy to watch, you grow fond for the characters one scene more beautiful than the other. I personally like best Jørgen Mortensen and Giulia couple because it creates the essence of love it's filling it's beauty it's power to overlook anything. It's a romance movie a story of hope centered on people, on the power of friendship as a family where by the presence of another being who listen to you and value you makes you feel important.

"Italian for Beginners", Danish with subtitles, has the premise of an Italian class along with a temporary pastor in the town as the starting point for a series of funerals and romances between a disparate group of people in a small village outside Copenhagen.The scenes are set realistically in the Dogma 95 model which has been endlessly written about and which can detract from this simple film if one gets caught up in the methodology. I chose not to.The movie takes a gentle hold after about fifteen minutes of dither, I never knew where it was going and why everything (plot, acting, script) was so murky -one aspect of Dogma philosophy is to shoot everything on video. But after that stretch of settling in, it charms and captivates.The characters are well drawn and reveal a complexity over the course of the film that is not evident in the beginning.I found myself smiling at the ending, shot in Venice, where the unhokey multiple romances get a gentle baptism with some nice little surprises laid along the way and a lot of funny, tender moments. 7 out of 10.