Loners Find Love, Dogme Style
Romantic comedy--with its conventions of unblemished star faces, swelling theme music, and gauzy lighting--seems like an unlikely genre for a Dogme film, a pedigree that, after all, calls for handheld cameras, no artificial light, no overdubbed music, or any of the usual trappings of manipulative Hollywood cinema.

Even more thrilling, then, that Lone Scherfig pulls off just that: a tremendously touching film about six loners who find love. A bereaved pastor, a clumsy baker's assistant, a hairdresser, a hotel manager, an angry waiter -- normal people who struggle with loss (you need both hands to count the deaths in this film) and try to find a ray of light in their evening Italian classes at the community center. The film is pitch-perfect in plumbing the depth of their pain before it slowly allows for a remarkable recovery. "Italian For Beginners" is an unfettered, honest potrayal of everyday people finding happiness. It is all the more involving for its lack of obvious manipulation -- and Meg Ryan is nowhere in sight.