Drama and comedy in a small Danish town. That's "Italian for Beginners" in 10 words or less. This Danish film, made in 2000, but seeing its first release in Milwaukee now after success worldwide, has all of the charm, wit and verve that a foreign-language film needs to succeed in the U.S. and, hopefully, this flick -- written and directed by Lone Scherfig -- will strike a chord with American audiences.
Just don't go in expecting a lot of Italian. Set in Denmark, a group of disparate characters is united by relationships and a once-a-week adult education Italian class. Clumsy Olympia (Anette Støvelbæk) lives at home with her aged father (Jesper Christensen), who criticizes everything she does. Life has been hard since her mother died.
Andreas (Anders W. Berthelsen), a young pastor whose wife died a few months ago, arrives as a temporary parson at a church where the older Reverend Wredmann (Bent Mejding) has lost his faith and is wreaking havoc -- mental and physical -- on his congregation.
Jorgen Mortensen (Peter Gantzler) is a shy, sweet Danish man who is impotent thanks to a "soccer injury." He works at a hotel with his best friend Finn (Lars Kaalund), whom Jorgen has been charged with firing, because Finn, who runs the hotel's sports themed restaurant with a real Italian, Giulia (Sara Indrio Jensen), is painfully rude to customers.
Finn has a crush on Karen (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen), who works at the local salon and who is struggling with her aged and ill mother (Lene Tiemroth). Jorgen has a crush on Giulia, who speaks no Danish. Giulia, it transpires, also likes Jorgen, but who will make the first move?
Andreas meets Jorgen when he checks into the hotel where Jorgen works. Both his new hotel pal and Olympia, who takes a shy liking to the new pastor, encourage him to come to their Italian class, taught by an old Italian man who dies of a heart attack during class.
Now class is threatened because a new teacher is proving hard to find and there are only seven students and the school requires a minimum of eight. But some of the students encourage Finn, who is the best in the class, to take over as teacher.
This leads Karen to the class, because she now reciprocates Finn's crush. This proves short lived, however, as Karen overhears Finn gossiping about her mother, who has recently died.
Olympia's father has also just died and the story takes a turn here that this reviewer won't divulge.
Suffice it to say that, as you can see, everyone's lives become more and more entwined and when the class decides to take a trip together to Venice, well ... things happen.
The carefully interwoven story and the fine acting by the entire cast make "Italian for Beginners" a joy to watch. Funny moments add some much-needed comic relief to an at times poignantly sad film.
"Italian for Beginners," inexplicably rated R, opens at Landmark's Oriental Theatre on Fri., Feb. 22.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
