Lone Scherfig

In 1995 Danish moviemakers Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) and Lars von Trier (Breaking The Waves, Dancer In The Dark) took a break from the technical and story conventions of modern cinema. Feeling uninspired by conventional moviemaking, with its emphasis on personal style and technical razzmatazz, they decided to play a new game. Enlisting the help of fellow directors Kristian Levring and Soren Kragh-Jacobsen, they agreed to break all the rules, and then create some new ones. And so was born their now famous Vow of Chastity, known as Dogme 95.

Italian For Beginners, the fourth Danish Dogme film, this time from director Lone Scherfig, brings us a slightly more comedic bent to the Dogme school of realism. The film follows a group of singles in a small, wintry Danish town who come together for an introductory Italian class once a week, and almost despite themselves, manage to create something in each other's lives.

Like its predecessors, the picture emphasizes character and the integrity of the moment over traditional narrative, while still managing to weave an engaging story that ties together rather tightly. Scherfig used experienced professionals as well as a few amateur actors in the piece, yet all the performances ring true. In a conversation with MM, Lone talks about beer commercials, Danish insecurities and staying true to that prickly Vow of Chastity.

Phillip Williams (MM): Did you plan to make Italian for Beginners as a comedy?

Lone Scherfig (LS): Not as much as we ended up with (laughs). There were quite a few comedic moments that showed up either because we improvised them or I made them up as we stood there. Some that sound improvised are exactly what's in the script. It's very hard to say when it's improvised and when it's not. Humor should be always surprising and there are many channels within comedy. Sometimes you can do something very slapstick or farce-like or something quite sophisticated, and there are many levels in between. But in this film I think you laugh not because people crack jokes, it's more because you are relieved that they're not so miserable anymore. (laughs)

MM: Or something unexpected in the characters pops out...

LS: I think so, too. If you read the script, it doesn't read as funny as it looks on screen. There were moments when we said, 'okay, let's shoot it, though we'll probably cut it out when we get embarrassed in the theater.' In fact, we invited about 250 people to a screening-they didn't know we were there-and they laughed a lot more than we expected. So there were jokes I was completely ready to cut out that are still in the film.

MM: What elements of humor did you think were necessary?

LS: I never thought that humor was necessary. I felt that the story should be able to stand on its own; you could have probably told the same story without humor, it just would have been a much sadder and much more boring film. So I did it not so much out of necessity but what you might call excess energy.

MM: Was your approach to this film typical of the way you work?

LS: No. They asked me to do a Dogme film, so I wrote the film for locations that are right around the film studio. The hairdresser's location is right down the street, the place where they study Italian is a room across from my office and the hospital location is just down the street. The story was written for the locations as they were. You wouldn't work that way for an ordinary film.

MM: When you started to write and conceive the film, did you look around and say 'Well, there is a hair salon down the street; I'll have a hair dresser as a character'?

LS: It's a combination, but the characters came first. I knew that there would be a priest and then I went down to the church and since the church had a balcony I wrote a scene that takes advantage of that: someone is thrown from the balcony in the film. Also, I wrote as we shot and kept changing the script to suit the locations and the weather, and in response to the material we already shot. It's a strange way of working. You can't do that in an ordinary film because the risk is much too high; you have to plan things more thoroughly in an ordinary picture, obviously.

MM: Why does it work with Dogme?

LS: Luck! (laughing) My assistant said to me, 'You must have ice in your stomach.' You have to very courageous. Balls of steel. You must have that to dare and make a feature film without a finished script. It takes a lot of courage; it involves a high level of risk to work that way, but the budget was low and my career could stand a failure. Everyone might say, 'Well, we've had four successful Dogme films, so it's time for a flop.' But the audiences and critics received the film very well in Denmark, in spite of the fact that it's a Dogme film-people or so sick of it there. (laughs)

MM: Your picture starts out feeling like it's going to be very heavy, but it's not, ultimately. The humor actually comes out of the characters; out of who they are.

LS: I hope people don't walk out because if you stay in the theater you are rewarded. It starts with a few heavy scenes, and there's no conventional title sequence or music. You are suddenly in the middle of this very sad film (laughs).

MM: How rough was the script when you began to shoot? Did you have your ending written?

LS: No, I didn't write the ending until we were in Venice, actually. And I would change the script all the time. Sometimes a scene would be written in great detail and sometimes the script would only indicate the gist of what happens and we would improvise. Sometimes I rewrote a scene the evening before we shot it-but that I've always done. People accept that, as long as what you come up with is better that what you had; it can make the process very lively and they respect it. But it's not an ideal way to work at all. The ideal way is to have a completed, excellent script and just shoot. When I have good material I don't change it at all; then the thing is much bigger than I am.

MM: Going in with an incomplete script wasn't a prerequisite for Dogme, though.

LS: No, it was partly bad discipline, partly just wanting to improvise and part of it is the Dogme way of not planning too much-working in a sort of freehand, like a fresco painter. The script is still full of all sorts of set-ups and details that pay off; everything happens for a reason. If you look at it closely you can see that there is still a very structured system at work.

MM: What did you learn from making a Dogme picture? When you go back to television or making a film with a larger budget, in a more conventional way, do you think your approach will be different?

LS: I trust myself a lot more than I did. I hope so, anyway, and when I actually start shooting my next picture, that will be true. What happened to me as a director is the same thing that happens to some of these characters in the film: I am changing my own psychological bent in a much more positive direction.