The phrases, ‘It was an accident!’ or ‘I didn’t mean to do that!’ are said pretty frequently throughout David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano’s darkly comic I Don’t Understand You. Those statements are true, after all. No one intends to have a carefree, Italian getaway full of authentic food and culture before it ends with some incidental (marinara-red-soaked) murder, but Craig and Crano’s film is nimble, clever, and, somehow, very sweet.
Andrew Rannells and Nick Kroll star as Cole and Dom, a married couple desperate to expand their family. Right before they take a highly anticipated trip to Italy for their tenth anniversary, Cole and Dom submit a video to a very pregnant Candace (oh, hey, Amanda Seyfried!), in the hopes that she will select them to adopt her child. Their trip has an alarming start when an overhead compartment with raw meat drips onto Cole’s shirt before their plane takes off. ‘This is a bad omen–I smell like blood,’ he complains to Dom as they make their way to their hotel.
A friend of Dom’s father arranges for the couple to have dinner at a farmhouse restaurant outside of the city, and that’s when the complications set in. In their new hotel, the employee, at first, doesn’t understand that Cole and Dom are a couple. He thinks the honeymoon suite is a mistake for two men, assuming that they are colleagues and friends, but since neither Cole or Dom speak Italian well enough, one might assume that the bellhop is being homophobic. On their way to the farmhouse, their car gets stuck in a back road, and a seemingly angry man drops them off at their destination–but not before he shoots an ailing deer on the road with a shotgun.
Cole and Dom realize they have made it to their destination, and famed chef, Zia Luciana, trots out fresh pizzas and wine. Her small restaurant used to be bustiling with people, but a family tragedy has caused her to rethink what she wants to do. When the power goes out, Zia takes a tumble down the stairs, and Cole and Dom panic with what they should do. The more they consider and debate, the deeper they get and the more bodies pile up.
Most of the humor of I Don’t Understand You stems from simple misunderstandings and confusions. A person’s tone of voice doesn’t always match what they are saying, especially if you don’t know the language they are speaking. Craig and Crano’s script, who are married in real life, speaks to how we are more terrified of making people uncomfortable or offending them when we can’t read a situation correctly. In a sequence where someone gets stabbed, the first thing the person brandishing the knife does is apologize. It’s horrific and hilarious in the same breath. Rannells and Kroll have a familiar, natural chemistry–their time on Big Mouth together helped, no doubt–and they are perfectly matched. There are tinges of 1992’s Once Upon a Crime mixed with the deviously queer mind of 2023’s Down Low. As a side note, no one can make Morgan Spector (who pops up as Zia’s mustachioed son, Massimo) unattractive.
I Don’t Understand You is an unhinged, murderous caper. On one level, it speaks to the ever-present concerns and fears that some queer people have when dealing with new places in the world, but it never loses its identity as a dark comedy.
I Don’t Understand You is available to rent and own.