Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

Denmark, France, United Kingdom, Sweden

2002

111 Min

Color

2.35:1

English

Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
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SCR Lone Scherfig, Anders Thomas Jensen

CAST Jamie Sives, Adrian Rawlins, Shirley Henderson, Lisa McKinlay, Mads Mikkelsen, Julia Davis, Susan Vidler

MUSIC Joachim Holbek

Berlinale (Out of Competition), Göteborg, Edinburgh, Toronto, London

Synopsis

Wilbur and Harbour are around 30 years of age when their father dies. The second hand bookstore they inherit has certainly seen better days – if there ever were any, that is. After a failed attempt to commit suicide, Wilbur becomes a patient of Horst, a rather cynical psychiatrist. The ward nurse at the hospital,Moira, and Harbour are convinced that the only thing that will help Wilbur combat his depression is a girlfriend. But although women are attracted to Wilbur, none have as yet managed to get close to him. Instead, Harbour is the one who finds himself falling head over heels in love with Alice, when she enters the lives of the two very different brothers.

Alice has a young daughter,Mary, and lives the isolated life of a single parent. In addition to her job cleaning the surgery at the hospital, she also earns a little money selling the books that patients leave behind on their beside tables. Gradually, Wilbur, Harbour and Alice get to know one another. The stronger their relationship becomes, the more Wilbur begins to regain his zest for life. Alice too begins to break out of the cocoon in which she has been living, and her daughter Mary becomes an avid reader of the bookstore’s extensive stock. Harbour was never this happy before. However, a secret lurks inside. –Berlinale

Director

Lone Scherfig

Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig is part of the Dogme 95 film movement, which espouses a form of cinéma vérité that eschews special effects and glitzy treatment of its subjects. Cameras are handheld; films are shot on location with no extraneous props or atmospheric music. This is all part of the group’s renowned, so-called “Vow of Chastity.”
Employing the principles of Dogme 95, Scherfig made Italian for Beginners in 2001. The film won the Silver Bear juried prize at the Berlin Film Festival, and has enjoyed accolades from audiences in Europe and America, where the director made a special version minus the Danish inside jokes. The romantic comedy — a new direction for the normally serious Dogme 95 — centers around a group of disparate people in Copenhagen, who meet to learn the Italian language. Relationships form; romances blossom; the story unfolds with ever increasing complications and convolutions, hinting at the complexities of love. The love angle may reflect a female sensibility… read more

Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig is part of the Dogme 95 film movement, which espouses a form of cinéma vérité that eschews special effects and glitzy treatment of its subjects. Cameras are handheld; films are shot on location with no extraneous props or atmospheric music. This is all part of the group’s renowned, so-called “Vow of Chastity.”
Employing the principles of Dogme 95, Scherfig made Italian for Beginners in 2001. The film won the Silver Bear juried prize at the Berlin Film Festival, and has enjoyed accolades from audiences in Europe and America, where the director made a special version minus the Danish inside jokes. The romantic comedy — a new direction for the normally serious Dogme 95 — centers around a group of disparate people in Copenhagen, who meet to learn the Italian language. Relationships form; romances blossom; the story unfolds with ever increasing complications and convolutions, hinting at the complexities of love. The love angle may reflect a female sensibility, something that Scherfig brings to the otherwise all-male Dogme 95 group, who invited her to join them. She has been quoted as saying that since she has made soap operas for television, she knew how to avoid crossing that line between tragi-comic and maudlin when writing the script for the film. Indeed, while the movie touches upon many serious subjects such as loss through suicide and divorce, it has a feel-good, light quality about it.
Italian for Beginners, shot on a budget of less than a million dollars using local settings, has brought the former Danish Film School teacher recognition from prestigious film festivals and Hollywood alike. That positive regard eluded her while working on several previous feature films, including On Our Own, as well as some forgettable sitcoms, such as Taxa, for Danish television.
Since the success of Italian for Beginners in America, Hollywood has beckoned. So far, Scherfig has resisted Tinsel Town’s siren call, preferring her quiet life and garden by the sea in Denmark with her husband and daughter. —allmovie guide

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