Review of "I Am Love"
Overblown, European, operatic, indulgent, patently absurd and somewhat wondrous, "I Am Love" works for one reason and one reason alone: Tilda Swinton.
What is an Oscar-winning, British-born, Scottish-living, red-haired eccentric doing in an Italian art movie about lust and loneliness? Saving it from becoming a cliché and transforming it into an oddly compelling experience.
Swinton plays Emma Recchi, the Russian-born wife of a wealthy Italian industrialist and mother to his three grown children. At first she's a downright regal figure, assured and perfectly porcelain.
But after she meets a young chef (Edoardo Gabbriellini) who is a friend of her son, the cracks begin to show in her façade. Out shopping one day, she sees the chef walking. Cue a modern classical soundtrack and suddenly you're watching "Cougar Hunt."
Soon the chef is her lover. Meanwhile, her husband and son have decided to sell the family business for the best of reasons -- money -- and her daughter has become a secret lesbian. So European.
Writer-director Luca Guadagnino's camera seems to caress every cobblestone street and aging church while also celebrating the absurdly lavish dinner parties the family hosts, offering great (if not terribly subtle) contrast to the simple chef's love of fine food. The film's sexiest scene involves Swinton eating prawns -- all reality dims around her as she tastes her lover's work and becomes consumed by his art.
It's nuts, but Swinton, who produced and developed this film over a number of years, makes it work. And in her final moment on camera -- shivering and shell-shocked at the turns in her life -- you have to admit: She may or may not be love, but she sure is something.
What is an Oscar-winning, British-born, Scottish-living, red-haired eccentric doing in an Italian art movie about lust and loneliness? Saving it from becoming a cliché and transforming it into an oddly compelling experience.
Swinton plays Emma Recchi, the Russian-born wife of a wealthy Italian industrialist and mother to his three grown children. At first she's a downright regal figure, assured and perfectly porcelain.
But after she meets a young chef (Edoardo Gabbriellini) who is a friend of her son, the cracks begin to show in her façade. Out shopping one day, she sees the chef walking. Cue a modern classical soundtrack and suddenly you're watching "Cougar Hunt."
Soon the chef is her lover. Meanwhile, her husband and son have decided to sell the family business for the best of reasons -- money -- and her daughter has become a secret lesbian. So European.
Writer-director Luca Guadagnino's camera seems to caress every cobblestone street and aging church while also celebrating the absurdly lavish dinner parties the family hosts, offering great (if not terribly subtle) contrast to the simple chef's love of fine food. The film's sexiest scene involves Swinton eating prawns -- all reality dims around her as she tastes her lover's work and becomes consumed by his art.
It's nuts, but Swinton, who produced and developed this film over a number of years, makes it work. And in her final moment on camera -- shivering and shell-shocked at the turns in her life -- you have to admit: She may or may not be love, but she sure is something.
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posted by Tom at
2:34 PM
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