30 Second Bottom Line: Adults in Copenhagen, Denmark, who all are overqualified to join a lonely hearts club, find a way to love via serendipity and a beginner's language course in Italian.
Story Line: Jorgen is the best friend of Finn who is a loud mouth manager whose best skill is to irritate the customers in the restaurant he manages. Jorgen has been instructed to fire Finn but he just can't find a way to do it. In part he is conflicted because of his incomplete personal life. Jorgen is so lonely that he's not had sex in over four years because he is impotent. There is nothing physically wrong with him. His impotency is the thoughts that go on in between his ears.
Andreas is a new minister that has been called in to replace a grouchy and seemingly deranged long time Pastor Wredmann. Olympia works in a bakery and is able to keep her job only because she puts money in the register from her purse to compensate for all the things she drops as a result of her clumsiness. Karen has a rental chair in a salon that she would like to purchase (the chair and the salon). She is almost able to give Finn a haircut on two different occasions but is called away because of health issues with her aging mother. Over the course of time, these and other characters come together first in a class for beginning Italian and then later in Venice on a field trip.
Tell Me More About It: If you are based in the US, one should keep in mind that going from Copenhagen to Venice is not much different than from Chicago to Washington DC. The borders are countries rather than states and many Europeans are bilingual making what is very challenging to some Americans, just second nature to them. It's fun to foresee the relationships develop before the characters themselves do.
Beneath this romanticism is a very serious message that deals with the loss of loved ones. Loss can bring awareness as Karen and Olympia in particular find out. The strange behavior of Pastor Wredmann is rooted in a loss that he has not learned to get over. Bad things can happen to good people to make them do things that are not very kind. Fortunately, they tend to be minor infractions that they and their "victims" can recover from.
Slipping in a message about fetal alcohol syndrome with respect to poor writing skills, easy bruising, and a low threshold for injuries, many important aspect of choices we make and how we live are made quite clear without the slightest hint of preaching.
The story is silly and serious at the same time. It's melodramatic but not a tear jerker regarding sadness. If it brings a tear to your eye, its because you are happy for them. If you have a lonely heart, there might be something here that allows you to see the world as a brighter place. I'm a soft touch for similar movies like this such as, Serendipity, Shall We Dance, Bread and Tulips, and Lone Star.We learn something about the world and a lot more about ourselves.
DVD