It's a little difficult to say exactly what This Charming Man is about, if only because there is so clearly so much going on beneath the surface. On the surface it is a charming romantic comedy, but there are times where the very serious issue of racism is brought up in a very serious way, but the movie has a remarkable ability to switch back and forth between comedy and drama that allows it to utilize each genre to its maximum potential each time it is brought up.
Lars is trying to find a job, just about any job. He's desperate. One day he meets a girl that he used to know in school who was sort of the girl that everyone picked on because of her weight, and he was certainly no exception. He is shocked at her appearance, she has lost a lot of weight and, simply put, is beautiful. He soon realizes that she is also very successful and not desperate for any job she can possibly find, like he is, and he quickly falls in love with her.
Evidently racism is quite rampant in Denmark, or at least that is how it is portrayed in this film. The guys go out to the bars and tell jokes like an atomic bomb exploded in Pakistan and guess how many people died, none because they are all here on the dole! Very clever. Since I grew up mostly in California, I have heard plenty of similar jokes about Mexicans, but this movie takes a very real approach at the prejudice that immigrants suffer in Denmark, because employers are quite open about the fact that they don't want to hire someone who is an immigrant. There is something of an open dislike or distrust of them that makes their lives extremely difficult.
Having come from a family of Colombian immigrants, I know almost first-hand what it is like for those people. I have never experienced racial prejudice myself, since my mother in white (Danish, actually, as it were) and my father Colombian and I got my light brown hair and blue eyes from my mother's side, but while I was growing up I saw my father struggling from one menial job to the next, trying to learn to speak English at the same time as he is trying to help support his sizable, unskilled and uneducated family in a new country. It's rough, you really have to appreciate what these people go through, and while this movie spends a significant amount of time making you laugh, I think it does give you a clear picture of the plight of the immigrant, which is obviously not limited to Denmark or America.
Interestingly, there is a point where Lars, the main character (under cover as El Hassan) does not get a job, and Ida, the woman Lars has fallen in love with, jokes that he can't find a job "Just because you're not blonde and you're name's not Hansen!" I just found that to be pretty funny, because my mother's maiden name is Hansen.
At any rate, the movie works very well as a romantic comedy. The love-struck Lars reminds me of the hopeless romantic Shaun in Shaun of the Dead, another outstanding, if a bit unorthodox, romantic comedy. This one takes on some pretty serious issues, but it does so with a clear understanding of the gravity of the subject matter that it was dealing with, and with wonderful success in the final film. Seek this one out.
