Films adhering to Lars von Trier's Dogme 95 guidelines seem to be performing less and less successfully in the United States.  The reason might have more to do with the overwhelming critical praise heaped on the first (the Oscar-nominated The Celebration) than the quality of those that have followed.  Though it's the 12th film to be Dogme-certified, Italian For Beginners is only the sixth to see any normal type of release in the U.S. (five have come from Denmark), and the first to be made by a woman (Lone Scherfig, who, per Dogme requirements, goes uncredited here).

Beginners, which never takes itself too seriously (you'd think ol' Lars made grim solemnity one of the Dogme rules), is as light as a feather, while the majority of its predecessors have been as dark as Michael Bay's soul.  The film, winner of four awards at last year's Berlin International Film Festival and Denmark's official entry into the upcoming Oscar race for Best Foreign Film, is, essentially, a clever romantic comedy presented with the dry, deadpan delivery of Steven Wright.

Set in a Copenhagen suburb, Beginners focuses on the lives of a half-dozen people with enough quirks and hangups to make them honorary members of the Tenenbaum family.  Like Ed Burns' Sidewalks of New York, which also dealt with six intertwining love lives, the characters are connected to each other in some way or another.  Hal-Finn (Lars Kaalund) is the hysterically rude manager of a sports bar whose bosses make him get a haircut, which is how he meets and falls for the neighborhood hairdresser, Karen (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen). Karen, through means I shouldn't discuss (it's a spoiler), unknowingly has a bond with Olympia (Anette Støvelbæk), an incredibly klutzy employee of a bakery who develops feelings for Andreas (Anders W. Berthelsen), the town's recently arrived pastor.

Because his fired predecessor won't give up the rectory, Andreas lives in the local hotel managed by the impotent Jørgen (Peter Gantzler), who has the hots for Giulia (Sara Indrio Jensen), a young Italian waitress at Hal-Finn's bar.  Three of the characters have to deal with parents so over the top with the meanness and the belittling that they could give Cinderella's stepmother a run for her money.  Each is single and bitterly lonely, which makes their kids want to fall in love as soon as humanly possible just to avoid ending up like their parents.

Then there's the titular Italian class, where the town's perpetually lovelorn congregate to dream about romantic trips to Venice and those boats with the really long sticks (except Jørgen, who merely wants to learn the language to impress Giulia).  Yeah, the story sounds like fodder for a lame-o Fox midseason replacement sitcom, but writer-director Scherfig does enough (in addition to working under the Dogme restrictions) to elevate what seems like middling material into what will hopefully be an Oscar contender.

Unlike most mainstream American romantic comedies (i.e., Kate & Leopold), Beginners works because, for the most part, it avoids the stupid clichés and formulaic potholes that befall its brethren.  I wouldn't dream of calling Beginners a "chick-flick," because its so unlike the movies that have been rightly saddled with that nickname.  There isn't anything here that would make a guy roll his eyes up into his head, or, in the case of Leopold, gnaw off his own arm to get out of seeing it.

1:58 –

for language and some sexuality