dom

Subtitles helpfully let us know what the skittish, suspicious Dom and Cole never quite understand about their friendly host.

That’s where “I Don’t Understand You” devotes its more darkly humorous energies when it sends Dom and Cole to sunny, pastoral Italy for an anniversary trip, dropping them into a series of lethally unfortunate situations that probably only Patricia Highsmith would consider a proper vacation.

It’s a cautious optimism, though, competing with the anxiety Dom and Cole generally feel as gay men on the alert for everyday microaggressions, also as tourists who don’t know the language and urbanites not exactly comfortable navigating another country’s backwaters at night.

Kroll and Rannells’ Dom and Cole, like Crano and Craig, learn the happy news of a match after adoption struggles, get their car stuck in a ditch on their anniversary trip and find refuge in an old Italian woman’s home.

Dom’s Duolingo streak proves insufficient in helping the couple communicate in Italy, and they often mistake the locals’ remarks or actions as homophobic.