Tilda Swinton at the New York City press junket for "I Am Love"
In this day and age, when more and more entertainers feel like they have to conform to certain images or personas to keep getting work and recognition, Oscar-winning British actress Tilda Swinton is proof that you can be a true individual and still be a successful, in-demand artist. Swinton does big studio movies as well as smaller independent films, some of which Swinton didn’t abandon during several years of development. One of those indie films is "I Am Love," an Italian-language drama in which Swinton stars as Emma Recchi, the wife of a wealthy textile mogul in Milan. Because the Emma Recchi character is a native of Russia, Swinton (who is also one of the producers of "I Am Love") had to learn to speak Italian with a Russian accent.
Emma is the mother of three adult children, and although she lives a comfortable life, she is bored without fully realizing it. A series of events leads her into an affair with a young chef named Antonio Biscaglia (played by Edoardo Gabbriellini), who plans to open a restaurant with Emma’s son Edoardo a.k.a. Edo (played by Flavio Parenti) — and the affair has consequences that change Emma and her family’s lives forever. I recently caught up with Swinton at the "I Am Love" press junket in New York City, where she opened up about what it was like to play a character who goes through a dramatic transformation on film, internally and externally. Swinton also briefly talked about her involvement in other projects, such the movie "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" (and why she was surprised to be in the movie’s trailer) and promotional art for Pringle of Scotland.
Tilda Swinton in "I Am Love"
What aspects of Emma Recchi did you like the most and what did you like the least?
That’s sort of my favorite question that I don’t know how to answer. The question is, "Why did we dream her up in the first place?" I’m trying to get the "like" or "not like."
I guess another way of putting it is, "Which part of the Emma Recchi character did you relate to the most on a visceral level and which part of the character was more of a challenge for you?"
I so don’t work that way. This is revealing that I don’t work like other actors. I don’t draw things out of myself or get viscerally involved, to be honest. We wanted to tell a story about somone who had a really developed inner life but who didn’t have much company. And we were drawing on fantasies of silent cinema and classic cinema and also the classic novel — Tolstoy, Flaubert — where you have a woman protagonist, who is very often a mother and who has given a whole part of her life to supporting and loving other people, but hasn’t necessarily been paying much attention to herself. That was the starting point.
So we wanted this person to be very interior, very quiet, not very articulate or verbal and not particularly communicative and fairly self-sufficient, but un-awoken. She’s not repressed or suppressed or oppressed in any way, but she’s just not really fully alive when we first meet her, although she would probably say she was happy. She would probably say she was content. And she lived a life that she had settled into. And we wanted to look at a woman who is re-approaching the idea of being of not just a mother, a woman not just defined that she’s not just there to support a marriage and children.
Edoardo Gabbriellini and Tilda Swinton in "I Am Love"
Were you influenced in any way by Madame de Rênal in Stendhal’s novel "Le Rouge et Le Noir (The Red and the Black)"?
I don’t know "The Red and the Black." I don’t think ["I Am Love" director/co-writer/producer] Luca [Guadagnino] did either. We were thinking of Emma Bovary, of course. We were thinking of Anna Karenina. And we were thinking of the many women in cinema who have a sense of "untapped in a life."
The last scene in "I Am Love" might lead viewers to speculate about what happens next to Emma. What’s your take on it, without giving away any spoilers?
It’s not there to be explained. It’s not there to even invite explanation. It’s like a gift to the audience, like a little parting, a goodie bag. It’s a fairy story, in fact. It’s as much a fable as "Beauty and the Beast" by [Jean] Cocteau. It lives in that fantasy milieu, but it’s not about that. It’s about "happily ever after." It’s about awakening and transformation …
Tilda Swinton in "I Am Love"
How significant is Emma’s wardrobe transformation, in terms of how it reflects her internal transformation?
I think it’s an avatar. She comes into this world as an alien. It’s a very particular world. I think any one of us marrying an industrial tycoon of that kind in Milan, particularly in the ‘90s, would find ourselves daunted to assimilate ourselves. There’s a uniform you have to supply yourself with … You need to walk the walk and talk the talk. You need to dress in a certain way in order to fit into the very precise grid that that world prescribes to people — it doesn’t just provide it; it actually prescribes it for them.
And for someone like Emma, who comes from outside of that milieu — particularly, someone who comes from that milieu where she’s not that equipped at all. It’s not like she moved from New York or moved Abu Dhabi. She comes from Soviet Russia into a world that she really has no preparation for. She has to learn the pose, and so her wardrobe, to a certain extent, is everything … It’s that whole thing about having the jewels put on her — like golden handcuffs, I like to think of them — by her husband. He’s the one who takes [the jewelry] out.
This whole idea of her lover taking her clothes off, her housekeeper dressing her, her husband putting her shoes back on — this whole feeling of her being dressable. The truth is that we are all dressable, and the same is true of anything we put on. And I think in that world, I think it’s all about that kind of wave of beautiful.
Can you comment on the color palate of the costumes for Emma’s life in the country versus her life in the city?
It was absolutely designed to do exactly that. [The people on the design] team were so responsive to our challenge, in a way, which was to make a responsive wardrobe for an uncommunicative person. She’s communicative in some ways, but the idea of her in a red dress that she might be in the process of falling in love. Or, for example, the dress she’s wearing the hospital … is several tones darker than the dress she’s wearing at the dinner party several minutes before. That whole color referencing is really fun to play with. When [the costume designer] pulls out something like, that what I think of now as San Remo orange, that kind of tangerine dress and those incredible tangerine pants, it’s a very cinematic response.
Tilda Swinton and Mattia Zaccaro in "I Am Love"
What message, if any, do you want people to take away after seeing "I Am Love"?
I’m not big on messages, certainly not in cinema.
Some people who see "I Am Love" might have a theory that Edo is secretly in love with Antonio. What do you think?
We were consciously downloading these tropes of melodrama … When we refer to it as a fable, it’s actually quite useful, because you think of a fairy story, a young queen in a palace with a king and a young prince, a Lancelot story in a way, with a magic potion. And there’s this whole feeling of destiny and inheritance. And we were very consciously pulling on those references.
And the relationships between the eldest son [Edo], who is in theory, the heir, but he’s a compromised heir, because he’s not exactly made very clearly the next in line. It’s all muddled with his grandfather’s ego, saying it would take two men to replace him … Who are I and Luca to judge homoerotic love for Antonio? The sense of their being a bond between the lover and the son far beyond the friendship is something that we wanted to tickle. We really wanted to tickle it and sort of scatter it into the audience. We’re not interested in making any particular statements or making anything particularly definitive … It was a set of experiments that we were playing with ourselves. We weren’t particularly interested in any answers.
Luca Guadagnino, Marisa Berenson and Tilda Swinton in "I Am Love"
You and Luca Guadagnino worked on making "I Am Love" for about 11 years. How did that affect your career or any other films you might have wanted to do?
The truth is that I’ve worked on so many films that have taken that long that it’s really not that exotic for me. Eleven years, the time it takes to make a film like this, it’s a seed in the ground for a very long time, and then very, very slowly a shoot begins to show. Once one is in a position to show it in cinemas, one can look back and work out on the 11 years and what each year was good for. Usually, it’s a blessing in every single year, like it’s only in the 10th year that one found a house, or somebody became the right age to play a part — that whole feeling of evolution is very clear.
I’ve never so far, fortunately, been in a position of developing something for a long time that hasn’t seen the light of day. That must be really tough, and it happens to so many people. But once one comes to the end of the 11 years, you look back and think, "You know what? I’m glad we didn’t make it earlier. It wasn’t ready."
Pippo Delbono and Tilda Swinton in "I Am Love"
Meanwhile, in those 11 years, there are other seeds growing in the ground. A couple of them have already come up for me, films that I’ve made. Magnolia [Pictures] distributed a film I did last year called "Julia." And there’s another film that we’re in the process of finishing now, called "We Need to Talk About Kevin." These were also long-standing projects in Europe that I’ve been growing.
And meanwhile, while they were growing, I was invited to some American parties by Tony Gilroy ["Michael Clayton]. The Coens ["Burn After Reading"] and David Fincher ["The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"], and I was very happy to go. I’m a small holder in Europe. I came [to do films outside Europe] because I was invited, but really, I have work to do at home.
Marisa Berenson, Pippo Delbono, Tilda Swinton, Alba Rohrwacher, Mattia Zaccaro, Flavio Parenti and Maria Paiato in "I Am Love"
You said earlier that you’re not very keen on movies having messages, but can you comment on how life among the wealthy and materialism are portrayed in "I Am Love"?
It’s observation of a certain snobbery — well, I don’t want to say "snobbery," because it’s more than snobbery. There’s a sort of hierarchy — I think a completely false hierarchy in the market, kind of global availability and domination of certain luxury brands which is disappointing at best. It’s possible to walk into a rich person’s house in any city in the world and find the same make of candles or the same shoes. I find it a waste of cultural specificity and history. I would so much rather walk into someone’s house, however much money they have, and feel I’m actually connecting with the culture of that place and the people who live in that place. I’m disappointed when I go through airports and I see the same shops. I think that particular luxury milieu is like one big duty-free [place] …
I think that’s one of the things that Emma responds to when she eats that food [by Antonio]. It’s hand-made by an artist, who is a vocational person who is working with his hands, and bringing himself to bear in a unique way, inventing things. And I think what she responds to in him is very close to a response to art and artists communicating really directly with people. It’s so fresh to her. It’s as if she has not expressed yet, maybe never before, but possibly it’s a reference to her back to a time when her father was an art restorer … And I know particularly at that time in Russia, to be a child in an art restorer’s house was a really very privileged place to live, culturally. I think it’s a re-awakening of her idea of this milieu of this brand domination.
Tilda Swinton in "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"
You reprise your role as the White Witch in "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," the third film in the "Narnia" movie series. How long did it take you to film what you do in that movie?
Oh, you know I’m in it? Yes, it’s true.
I know you can’t give away any spoilers, but it’s not a secret that you’re in the movie since you’re shown in the movie’s trailer.
Well, I’m amazed that they would put [my scene] in the trailer, because I spent less time filming it than I spent speaking to you [in this interview]. [NOTE: This interview was 23 minutes long.]
Tilda Swinton and Alba Rohrwacher in "I Am Love"
A lot of articles and reviews for "I Am Love" are saying that when Emma’s daughter, Betta, comes to terms with her true sexual identity and she tells members of her family that she’s a lesbian, her "coming out" parallels Emma’s re-awakening and Emma’s search to find her own true self. And Betta is also the family member who is the most accepting of Emma at the end of the film. Can you comment on that observation, and do you think it’s accurate?
It’s very precise, and it’s very well-noticed. It’s very important to us to place the narrative of the story that Emma is led into her liberation by her children. She is introduced to her lover by her son [Edo]. She is introduced to the concept of love, in many ways, by her daughter. And that’s something that we do feel very strongly about: the probability of being enlightened by your children.
It’s something we feel very tender about in the story: the relationship between the mother and the daughter, and the way in which the daughter — at that darkest moment of alienation — it’s the daughter who blesses the mother and gives her the license to be free. It’s a personal observation that we’ve made. It’s my personal observation as a parent that one’s children hold the key, absolutely, to one’s future. And one doesn’t necessarily need to look further than them.
Tilda Swinton at the New York City premiere of "I Am Love"
In 2009, you started being a spokesmodel for luxury knitwear brand Pringle of Scotland. What can you say about that aspect of your life?
Certain people who work in fashion as artists are very close friends of mine, and collaborations with them are very important. I’m open to new relationships. I go with the relationship into wherever we go. Ryan [McGinley who’s directed Pringle of Scotland short films starring Swinton] and I are friends, and we’ve worked now on the second Pringle campaign together, and we’re really having laugh.
In 2008, you started an unconventional film festival in your Nairn, Scotland, where you live. Do you have any plans to do the festival again this year?
We’re not doing it this year, because everybody’s expecting us to do it.
Comments