The middle-aged couple, Dom and Cole, look like characters who should have been on the second season of the show The White Lotus, only that they are fed up with how the world looks in on them. Being American, they have the opportunity to get married and have children legally, which is what most heterosexuals can do. However, both Dom and Cole are not fresh faced to staging queerness either as they’ve encountered negativity from their gayness so it’s hardly surprising that they’re the types to expect bigotry in every sitch. Hence, the worst is what they get, which is what they expected.
Inspired by Brian Crano and David Craig’s struggles to be parents, I Don’t Understand You is about cat fights between the gay couple Dom and Cole, where there exists a blissful truce until one day that truce abruptly ceases to be. While they are on a trip to Italy celebrating their anniversary, Dom and Cole get the unexpected news that the baby they wanted to adopt (after waiting for one such opportunity for ages, but have had one fall through) has almost been born. An old family friend arranges for them to enjoy dinner at a private restaurant. And so on. La vita è bella.
The vacation started off like any regular vacation with a sunny atmosphere and the couple indulging themselves, but as the vacation episode develops, something sinister starts happening as the episode progresses. Bodies start to fall one by one, and the two of them don’t know whether it was really a homophobic attack, or whether they have been the aggressors to their almost too kind hosts. Yet, their hostility comes out when they say things like ‘the gonna be dey-ud.’ It is very likely that if someone has been bullied and abused the whole of their life-like Dom and Cole feel they have-such signals can be and are easily glitched. For the differences in culture, language and geography, it can make everything go up in excitement to intense confrontation in a rapid speed that is unparalleled.’ The foremost impression one has is regarding Dom and Cole and their surrounding environment of people. But as time goes on, one realizes that Dom and Cole are displaced and dangerous people. Other people can see things that have not been seen in the film, and they are: the lives of the two main characters and their difficulties and problems. ‘I don’t understand you’ is a film that centers on politics. Nevertheless, the film makes you feel a little sorry for the outcouple. Kroll and Rannells portray the couple’s depiction with the belief that the world is against them.
As their fictional characters, the writer-directors are also in a marriage, hence the contours of fears are likely to be self-referential; although, they are inevitably heightened. That’s one of the reasons why the movie is effective: Things spin out of order for Dom and Cole, but there is a sense of realism in their tale. These not too ideal future parents carry their CHIP more than anything else in the world: the CHIP being the baby. That reason disallows any other challenges faced against them; ranging from microaggressions which they self-inflict upon forgiveness: like the hotel staff who don’t understand why they had specifically chosen to book a honeymoon suite and then go out of their way to create a scene of physically separating the beds – to physical risks that are more visceral.
While heading to the reserved table for them, the couple with the rental car took a wrong turn and ended up down a private road, which ultimately led them to a stranded position. The moment a ferocious owner of the land shows up with a gun in his hands, they expect the worst. Especially since they had no plans of learning Italian! (Dom tried DuoLingo but can’t say anything). And judging from the expressions on their ship faced, it is clear what these two have in mind: They have barely become fathers, and it seems that they are going to be robbed, raped or both in the middle of nowhere in Italy.
Luckily, before the concerned duo is able to put their plan into action, an unfriendly third party drives them to the table. Perhaps the inhabitants are not as cruel as they thought. Here, co-directors Crano and Craig leave the audience in suspense as to how the situation will develop. Francesca, a veteran of “White Lotus” Eleonora Romandini, is the owner of the restaurant that they instantly fall in love with, but their fantasies alert them as they perceive the evil-looking knife-wielding woman with a macho son (Morgan Spector) as a threat.
In terms of aesthetic, expect the worst because otherwise you will be left disappointed – that is how I don’t understand firmly embodies itself. There’s something remarkably tongue-in-cheek in the quoted lines about getting into the characters’ heads, and expecting accepted norms broken. In the meantime, a mysterious woman, not only married to him, works in baby-sitting nearly every American, Amanda Seyfried, mostly via a low quality Skypе (as a parody on low quality video workshops). And Francesca is outrageously delighted with the idea of inviting a homosexual couple into her house, where, according to her, normality is missing, which is deprived of her own son. If only Dom and Cole knew her language, or for that matter the subtitles, which is what informs the audience of what they are not able to understand.
What happens instead is that their fears are triggered. This section of the film, where cultural differences become chaos, I do not think is successful. The authors of the film see how gay men even today, raised in more tolerant places, carry some remnants of survival, like a PTSD. But the absurdity seems to be exaggerated: in such mild circumstances, the more straightforward account of the directors celebrating their wedding anniversary in Italy, the one that does not feature any murders, may have been more appropriate. The movie shows the parents’ wish to reproduce as an overpowering need to become parents. It’s a lot more ‘normal’ to have some mental or emotional breakdown than it used to be to.
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