Directed by: Luca Gaudagnino
Written by: Luca Guadagnino, Barbara Alberti, Ivan Cotroneo, & Walter Fasano
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 120 min.
“Love's labour’s found”
Scottish actress Tilda Swinton speaks Italian (in a Russian accent no less) for the part of Emma Recchi, the matriarch of a Milenese family headed by a wealthy textile factory owner. A Russian immigrant from more than twenty years ago, Emma is now discontent with her bourgeois existence. Seeing the passion of young love in her daughter, her eye is drawn to her son's mysterious friend, Antonio, a chef with a taste for food and life.
I Am Love elevates the affair between Emma and Antonio with operatic grandeur, right down to an exquisitely intrusive score by veteran opera composer John Adams. This is a highly cinematic film unafraid of going big, where a plate of prawns becomes an almost orgiastic treat and a surreptitious follow has the verve of a full on chase. One dazzling sequence has Emma and Antonio making love out in the countryside, all of nature perfectly attuned to their passion, as the soundtrack and editing build to a frenzy with every heave and thrust. Whether such a description sounds like it reeks of pomposity may depend on what type of filmgoer you are. Even most lovers of arthouse have a low tolerance for embellishment for embellishment's sake. But I Am Love is a special case, a film almost keenly self aware of its aspirations of high art but restrained in its eagerness to succumb to gratuitous tragedy. The script, however indulgent, is never histrionic.
Emma is, after all, a grown woman whose sexual appetite is awakened by the exuberant thrill of a life that has always been in front of her. And Swinton, so striking a presence in all of her films, is at once mature and ageless. She has the uncanny ability to epitomize the classic, the contemporary, and the ethereal all in one look, and director Luca Guadagnino (with help from cinematographer Yorick Le Saux no doubt) shoots her in bold strokes against a lavish backdrop of Italian hills and villas. In this vein, the film exudes a timeless quality to it, as if unconstrained by period or locale.
Film is a visual medium, capable of emotions and details big and small. It's always disappointing to see how few films take advantage of the medium’s vast visual canvas. I Am Love is a film about sensuality that never forgets to be sensual.
Grade: A-
Percentage: 85%
Star Rating: ****1/2/*****
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