I Am Love
This movie is like eating bonbons in a hothouse. For some films, walking the fine line between sublime and silly becomes an entertainment in itself, and such is the case with I Am Love, Luca Guadagnino’s lush drama set within an Italian business dynasty in Milan. We see much of the film from the perspective of an outsider who has nevertheless fitted herself into this aristocratic world for many years: Emma, the Russian-born wife of the textile company’s new CEO. She’s played by Tilda Swinton, whose customarily penetrating work is enhanced by her speaking Russian and Italian (how does she do it?). The Russian heritage might be a tip-off–Emma could have a touch of Anna Karenina about her–because she embarks on a grand affair with a much younger man. The many levels of melodrama play out against gorgeous exteriors and wildly overdressed interiors, as though Guadagnino looked back through Italian film heritage and decided it was time for someone to out-do the opulent visions of Luchino Visconti. Adding to the strong flavor of high aestheticism is the soundtrack, which uses various excerpts of pieces by the great contemporary composer John Adams, to evocative effect (the opening shots of snowed-over Milan buildings are spellbinding). But let’s not forget about the silly: one can concede the movie’s usefulness as eye candy while noting that there is something fundamentally pretentious and overheated about it all, a designer’s vision of storytelling. I Am Love overshoots the sublime by a wide margin, but it’s fun to consume. –Robert Horton
Rating:  List Price: $ 26.98 Price: $ 19.99 |
(out of 3 reviews)
Review by Keris Nine for I Am Love
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If you were somewhat skeptical of former Gucci fashion designer turned filmmaker Tom Ford’s lush stylisations and emotional resonances in A Single Man, then you’ll hardly be convinced by the latest film from Luca Guadagnino, an Italian film director who has worked previously on promotional advertisements for Fendi. In contrast to the stark minimalism of slow-cinema that is currently fashionable in art house cinema, the extraordinarily beautiful I Am Love, as the titles suggests, simply wallows in an excess of sensory and emotional states.
There’s little about the subject that seems attractive, dealing as it does with the lives of an important rich aristocratic Recchi family from Milan, the film dwelling initially on the opulence of their lives, the exquisite furnishings of their family mansion, the elegance of their expensive clothing and the sumptuous extravagance of the haut-cuisine food they as they celebrate the birthday of the family patriarch, Edoardo. At the dinner-party however, the grandfather hands over the running of the successful international family business to his son Tancredi (Pippo Delbono) and his grandson Edoardo Jr. (Flavio Parenti), and although this rankles somewhat, there is clearly a family unity that holds them together and is wary of admitting outsiders.
Cracks are beginning to show however and it’s not just in the realities of the family business trying to keeping up-to-date with the workings of the modern business world, but it’s shown also in a number of remarkably subtle ways, all of them stemming from the opening dinner-party. Edo has been unaccountably beaten in a prestigious boating race by Antonio, the talented chef who has prepared the evening’s meal, and there is a hesitancy about accepting his new girlfriend into the family; the daughter Elizabetta (Alba Rohrwacher) has broken tradition in the present she gives to her grandfather, suggesting that she is going to go her own direction in her studies and in her love life, going moreover against an alliance that she would be good for the family; but the biggest change that is to have profound consequences for the Recchi family occurs with their mother Emma (Tilda Swinton).
The suggestions made, there is however nothing subtle about how director goes about recounting the fall of the Recchi household, the subsequent delirious and tragic events depicted with all the emotional heft and complex layering of Italian grand opera (the baroque minimalism of a John Adams score however giving it a much more modern flavour), with cinematic resonances that point to the Italian masters of Visconti and Antonioni. Guadagnino however has a few tricks and innovations of his own, finding a manner to cinematically depict intense sensory impressions and experiences that is unfashionably and almost embarrassingly uninhibited. I Am Love is an extraordinary film, an extraordinarily beautiful one, and one moreover that succeeds utterly in its creation of an interior emotional world as much as the external material world that it depicts. It’s the clash between these two worlds then that is to prove the fatal to the Recchi family, and the viewer has no option but to be similarly swept along.
Review by Loves the View for I Am Love
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Director Guadagnino carries on the Italian tradition of creating beauty. Every frame of this film must be suitable for framing. You can get lost in the stylish world of the Recchi Family, the streets of Milan or the beautiful countryside. There is wonderful attention to the behind the scenes work of the servants, how they silently and gracefully facilitate the family’s life of elegance.
The Recchi family is on the threshold of change. The patriarch and head of the family business has suitably chosen a family dinner to announce that his son and grandson will now take the reigns. His son wants to modernize and sell the business; his grandson wants to carry it on with all its benevolent traditions.
While this particular piece of glue that holds the family together is coming apart other family members are asserting their independence in different ways. Here, the patriarch’s daughter-in-law, a true outsider, a Russian beauty and his granddaughter, her daughter, follow their hearts. This is where the film’s visual beauty meets with operatic passion, further illustrated in music by John Adams. The coming apart is both stunning and devastating. The films final images will stay with you for days.
Review by Andy Orrock for I Am Love
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We saw ‘I Am Love’ at the 2010 Dallas Film Festival. Beyond admiring Tilda Swinton’s impressive performance (nothing short of amazing that she did the entire film in Italian and Russian – wow!), I don’t think anyone knew quite what to make of this outing from writer/director Luca Guadagnino. At an event eager to reward fine works with a round of applause, a shock of silence met the lights when they came up on this one.
I am an active watcher of arthouse releases. I am not distracted in the least by subtitles. I count German, Israeli and Spanish films among my favorites. So, that’s not the issue here. For me, the heavily-played score from John Adams (the first film score from this Pulitzer Prize-winner) pounding (and I mean POUNDING) away over the e-x-c-r-u-c-i-a-t-i-n-g-l-y overly-long love scenes between Swinton’s Emma and her young lover (the word ‘interminable’ seems invented for this occasion alone), sent me over the edge from marginally interested to put-out. Have you ever seen an entire audience look away out of embarrassment or imagine a group silently pleading en masse that the director just move on? It happened here.
The spotlight review here on this page compares this film favorably to the lush production values of Tom Ford’s inaugural effort (A Single Man). But what surprised on Ford’s film was not only the attention paid to the look of each frame, but to his narrative skill and focus on character development. Yes, Colin Firth and Julianne Moore played a large part of those aspects of the film’s success, but Ford showed a deft touch in moving the film along and making us care about the characters. Guadagnino, by contrast, gets stuck on the stuffy rituals of upper class Milan, then food, and then Emma’s fascination and affair.