MOVIE REVIEW

"Italian for Beginners" charms with its crafty plot and six well-drawn characters coping with life and romance.

By Kenneth Turan, Times Film Critic

It gets, in case you hadn't noticed, awfully cold and bleak in Copenhagen in the winter, and the Danes, who definitely have noticed, often escape in thoughts of Italy, a place that symbolizes passion, romance and several kinds of warmth.

Sometimes they even try to learn the language, which is where "Italian for Beginners," as completely charming a romantic comedy as this still new year is likely to see, enters the picture.

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A delicious and delicately funny look at the residents of a Copenhagen neighborhood coping with the befuddling complications life tosses at them, "Italian for Beginners" won a Silver Bear and other awards at Berlin, where it was much talked about for being the first picture made in the cinema verite Dogma style to be written and directed by a woman, Lone Scherfig. None of this, however, matters as much as how expertly Scherfig has molded her characters and constructed her plot, which is laden with crafty complications and unexpected catastrophes, but is so well put together you never notice how much work has gone into it.

Like its fellow Scandinavian production, Sweden's "Together," "Italian for Beginners" is a textured comedy, not afraid to season its humor with anger, mortality and unapologetically bleak moments.

It's a film that recognizes the laughter and sorrow of a question such as "How soon after someone dies can you fall in love?" And it's a film that manages, without making a fuss, to make points about the nature of faith, the difficulty of parents, even the consequences of fetal alcohol syndrome.

More than anything, however, "Italian for Beginners" is about falling in love. It focuses on six individuals, none of whom is particularly adept at romance, which they approach in different ways and at different speeds. Most of all, these are people who understand the truth of Pastor Andreas' remark: "It is in loneliness that God seems farthest away."

The pastor (Anders W. Berthelsen) knows this as much as anyone. A young and very recent widower, he arrives in town to replace a cranky older colleague who got so out of hand he threw the church organist off a balcony and still hangs around to heckle Andreas' sermons. The new pastor is told that a community center class in conversational Italian might help pass the time, so he goes.

Already attending are two men who work at the hotel Andreas is put up at. Jorgen Mortensen (Peter Gantzler), who manages the place, is a quiet, diffident man with serious romantic difficulties, while his best friend, Hal-Finn (Lars Kaalund), is an abrasive lout who runs the hotel's sports bar and systematically abuses his customers.

Hal-Finn became passionate about the language after an Italian soccer team made his bar its local hangout. Not needing language lessons, at least not in Italian, is the sports bar's young and beautiful Italian waitress, Giulia (Sara Indrio Jensen).

*

Two other women end up at the classes. Karen (Ann Eleonora Jorgensen) runs a hair salon and has no end of trouble with her failing alcoholic mother. Olympia (Anette Stovelbaek), works at a bakery while dodging the wrath of her intemperate father. Her longevity at the shop is open to question, however; because she's very clumsy, she's had 43 jobs since she left high school.

As even these thumbnail sketches indicate, the great thing about "Italian for Beginners" is that all of its people are completely and unmistakably individual. This is a film that likes and is intrigued by its characters, that allows them to be eccentric, funnier than they realize and very much themselves.

"I think that life is about comedy and melancholy," writer-director Scherfig has said, and "Italian for Beginners" shows what an irresistible blend that can be.

*

MPAA rating: R, for language and some sexuality. Times guidelines: relatively mild though repeated use of vulgar language.

"Italian for Beginners"

Anders W. Berthelsen...Andreas

Ann Eleonora Jorgensen...Karen

Anette Stovelbaek...Olympia

Peter Gantzler...Jorgen Mortensen

Lars Kaalund...Hal-Finn

Sara Indrio Jensen...Giulia

Miramax Films and Zentropa Entertainment6 present DOGMEXII with support from DR V/Marianne Mortizen and the Danish Film Institute V/Vinca Weidemann and Gert Duve Skovlund. Released by Miramax Films. Writer-director Lone Scherfig. Producer Ib Tardini. Cinematographer Jorgen Johansson. Editor Gerd Tjur. In Danish with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.