Watching Italian for Beginners, many thoughts ran through my head: Why is this camera so shaky? Where is the titles sequence? Why no music? This scene looks a bit under-lit. These thoughts could have served as a distraction, but I finished the film having enjoyed a charming and witty romantic comedy despite what I thought to be poor creative choices on the part of Lone Scherfig, the writer/director.

It was only when I got back to my computer and did a bit of research on the film that I found out that it was made under the principles of Dogma 95, an experimental filmmaking movement founded by Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. The goal of these two men was to “purify” the art of film and free movies from splashy SFX and post-production magic. Filmmakers taking part in the movement are required to take the “Vow of Chastity” which includes such rules as on-location filming without the use of props, the sole use of hand-held video cameras, the elimination of special lighting and optical work, no credit to the director, etc.

A product of this movement, Italian for Beginners is a Danish film about a young minister who has been sent to a church where the current pastor has driven his congregation away with his harsh attitude. At the young minister’s hotel, he meets Jorgen Mortensen, a middle aged man trying to come to terms with impotence. Jorgen’s friend Finn is a quick-tempered restaurant manager who has a lovely Italian assistant named Guilia who says prayers every day asking the Holy Virgin to bring her a husband. Karen, a hairdresser, has a very sick mother who she must constantly care for, even at the expense of her business. Also trying to care for an ailing parent is Olympia, an inherently clumsy bakery worker whose father could not be more ornery. All these character’s paths cross many times during the film and all of them eventually end up enrolling in the same Italian class at the local college where a communal bond is formed that will culminate in a class visit to Venice.

The characters in Italian for Beginners are established very well and the script is quite sharply written. Even though all the actors give very convincing performances (especially Peter Gantzler as Jorgen Mortensen and Bent Mejding as the temperamental and spiritually confused Reverend Wredmann), the nature of Dogma requires that it loosk very much like a documentary. I found the editing to be very distracting and acutely jarring. Parts of the story are very intimate and relational and the constantly handheld, moving camera is quite intrusive.

It is a bit of a concession to call Italian for Beginners a romantic comedy because it touches on some very serious and profound topic such loneliness, the power of prayer, materialism, loss, and many others. The narrative seems easily distracted with and quite entangled in all these themes that it never truly focuses on the main theme: the redeeming qualities of love. Not just romantic love, but the love of friends, the love of family, and the love of God.

Some may see Dogma ‘95 as a great advantage for independent filmmakers who do not have the money for expensive post-production on effects, but I fail to be that excited about it. From my perspective, all art (especially film) is a way of heightening or intensifying reality in order to communicate some truth about the nature of human existence. Dogma 95 seems like a bit of a cop-out from making a film an intensely visual creative experience. Von Trier and Vinterberg’s manifesto even states something along these lines: “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.” It is a blatent attempt to strip the medium of film of artistry and I find their ideals somewhat reprehensible.

Even so, by the time the end title cards were placed one-by-one on a dinner table, I enjoyed Italian for Beginners and was fascinated by the characters and their situations. I just think the film would have been much more meaningful had I found a quality of poetic beauty in the execution.