Italian for Beginners had rave reviews on Yahoo! Movies when I checked it out a long time ago. Unfortunately, it never made it to Pittsburgh for a long time (it was playing in NY, LA and SF, go figure…). Yesterday, while I was on my way to meet a friend, I happened to pass by the Cinemagic Squirrel Hill and noticed that it was playing there. So I just had to go catch it before I missed my chance.
There have always been times when the theatre has been sparsely occupied on a Sunday night for a movie. But this time was the first time had the privilege of watching the entire movie completely by myself. Somehow, the big sreen thing didn’t make that much of a difference. I would have been perfectly happy watching the same movie on my laptop with my headphones :).
But, anyhow, the movie itself was actually very good. It’s a Danish movie, with a trickling of Italian thrown in here and there (duh, obviously) and with subtitles in English. The movie did a great job of setting up the lives of the people portrayed in the movie. How each person had gone through some personal tragedy which affected them deeply. It did a good job of allowing the viewer to relate to the characters being portrayed.
But after such a spectacular setup one cannot help be disappointed when the movie ends on a rather abrupt note. It was a happy note for sure… and an obviously good ending for the movie, but it was just so predictable that it sort of left me wanting more.
Of course Giulia was the cutest looking thing you could imagine in the movie :). Overall a good movie and highly recommended viewing.