Product Details

• Actors: Elizabeth Reaser; Gretchen Mol; Justin Kirk; Julianne Nicholson; Tina Benko; Jennifer Dundas; Kate Simses; Brian Letscher; Will Bozarth; Ken Barnett; Becca Anderson; Ashlie Atkinson; Jill DeMonstoy; Yoshiro Kono; Nick Psinakis; Terrence Riordan; Chris LaPanta; Kenji; Bridget Moloney
• Directors: Maria Maggenti
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: Strand Releasing
• DVD Release Date: July 3, 2007
• Run Time: 82 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000N2H8XC
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #65,069 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
ALLEGRA LOVES HER GIRLFRIEND SAMANTHA BUT CANT COMMIT. WHEN SAMANTHA LEAVES HER, ALLEGRA REBOUNDS WITH HANDSOME PROFESSOR PHILLIP AS WELL AS WITH THE BEAUTIFUL RECENTLY SINGLE GRACE. ALLEGRA JUGGLES SECRET RELATIONSHIPS WITH BOTH, NEVER SUSPECTING THAT PHILLIP AND GRACE HAVE A CONNECTION OF THEIR OWN.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Cute and complex, yet irritating, July 15, 2007

By	Dennis! (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

SPOILERS AHEAD.

This movie was kinda cute and charming. Fun for a bit of mindless entertainment -- you can't allow yourself to get too focused on the fact that in the city of 8 million people this one chick happens to find herself in a room with her boyfriend, her girlfriend who is also the boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, and her ex-girlfriend at the same time.

The movie would have more endearing if I liked Allegra more. As it was, though, the movie was intended to be a chronicling of her growth, and that pretty much means she has little redeeming qualities in the first instance. And I found it very hard to care about her character when, after finding out that the two people she's "dating" (term used loosely) are an ex-couple and after being expressly advised by her best friends to dump them both, she apparently makes little to no attempt to do so -- as if she WANTED to get busted anyway.

I'm giving this movie 3 stars because I enjoy the acting talent of Mol and Kirk... but Allegra's character leaves a lot to be desired, and while she's meant to be "complex," she's also really kind of a jerk.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Woody Allen for Beginners, August 17, 2007

By	Roland E. Zwick (Valencia, Ca USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

**1/2

Written and directed by Maria Maggenti, "Puccini For Beginners" is a tres chic romantic comedy set in a movie-spawned Manhattan where virtually everyone we meet is Caucasian, trendily upscale and sexually conflicted.

The strained setup lands somewhere between a labored screwball sex farce and a recycled Woody Allen angst-fest: Allegra (Elizabeth Reaser) is an opera-loving, afraid-of-commitment lesbian who finds herself inadvertently and simultaneously dating both a man (Justin Kirk) and his longtime girlfriend (winningly played by Gretchen Mol). As Allegra bounces back and forth between her two oblivious paramours, the characters talk out the issues of their relationships as if they were channeling left-over bits from "Annie Hall" or "Manhattan."

"Puccini for Beginners" is one of those small-scale independent features that thinks it's being smarter and more insightful about romantic relationships than it really is. Actually, after all those really sharp Woody Allen exposes on the same subject, very little in this film feels like fresh observation. To be truthful, with the exception of Mol's winsome Grace, most of the characters here are more annoying than they are appealing. Not only are the plotting and much of the writing too cutesy by half, but so is Maggenti's directorial style, which relies heavily on smart-alecky narration, freeze-framing, and dopey fantasy sequences to generate laughs.

"Puccini for Beginners" offers a few genuinely funny moments within its blessedly short 81-minute running time, but throughout we're plagued by the nagging and irreverent suspicion that the film might have been more accurately entitled "Puccini for Idiots."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Puccini for Beginners: Girl-on-Girl Romances are Like Opera., November 12, 2008

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Maria Maggenti is known for her 1995 film, The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, which as the title suggests, tells the story of two high school girls who fall in love. Her more recent film, Puccini for Beginners, brought audiences to their feet at its Sundance Film Festival premiere in 2006. Set in New York, a city of endless possibilities, it chronicles the lesbian breakup of Samantha (Julianne Nicholson) and Allegra Castiglione (Elizabeth Reaser), an opera-loving writer with a history of relationship issues. Basically, she is afraid to say, "I love you." After she meets Columbia professor Philip (Justin Kirk) at a party while binging on Camembert, Allegra unknowingly has sex with his hot ex-girlfriend, Grace (Gretchen Mol). Allegra then begins multi-dating both Philip and Grace, afraid to commit to either, before Grace shows Allegra a picture of her ex-boyfriend, Philip. After Philip and Grace confess to each other that they're seeing someone else, they eventually realize they've been seeing the same woman. Puccini is known for his romantic operas like La bohème, Manon Lescaut, and Madama Butterfly, in which characters typically have more than one lover and romantic relationships are synonymous with heartbreak.. In that respect, Maggenti pays homage to Puccini with her sophisticated film. Puccini for Beginners is funny, witty, and smart. Although it doesn't even equal Woody Allen's lesser work, Maggenti's urbane film is entertaining lesbian cinema without any ideological agenda.

G. Merritt