Film Review: ‘I Am Love’ Offers Scintillating Showcase For Tilda Swinton

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Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “I Am Love” is the type of visceral tone poem that requires its audience to feel more than think. As the end credits roll, viewers may find themselves going over the plot in their heads, and discovering its inherent shallowness. It’s only after we wake up from a dream that we discover just how silly or inexplicable it all was.

Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino has created a romance so punch-drunk on passion that it forgets to tell a decent story. Any trashy romance novel available in the bargain box at Borders could probably tell a tale as complex and unpredictable as this one. Once the gears of the plot start grinding away, there’s no turning back. The melodramatic plot twists are a hoot, and threaten to derail the film into all-out lunacy toward the end. But this is one rare instance where a film’s style is so utterly spellbinding that it manages to more or less compensate for the shortcomings of its story. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s probably one of the best films in cinema history that warrants comparison to a trashy romance novel.

Read Matt Fagerholm’s full review of “I Am Love” in our reviews section.

Film buffs will appreciate Guadagnino’s affectionate homages to the Sirkian theme of forbidden love between classes, as well as Visconti’s portrayal of the upper-crust Milanese. The movie opens at a family gathering where the key characters only gradually emerge from the crowd. There’s a wonderful high-angle shot in which a chandelier appears to pin the family members to the floor as they assemble for dinner. The elderly patriarch passes on ownership of his industrial company to son Tancredi (Pippo Delbono), and grandson Edoardo (Flavio Parenti). This gets in the way of Edoardo’s plans to open a restaurant with his friend, the gifted chef Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini). It’s the turn of the century in Milan, and as the seasons change, so do the hearts and fates of these privileged yet sheltered souls.

The real crux of the action emerges deep into the film, when Tancredi’s wife Emma (Tilda Swinton), a Russian immigrant trapped in a passionless marriage, finds herself falling for Antonio. It’s here that “I Am Love” begins to move with the ebb and flow of a rapturous fever dream, as the characters become intoxicated by the allure of sudden passion. Swinton, whose red hair and pale skin often inspires comparisons to Conan O’Brien, has rarely looked more ravishing. She nails her character’s Italian dialect (deftly tinged with a Russian inflection), while capturing her rediscovered eroticism, whether through the sensual stroking of a tree branch, or the savoring of a particularly good meal.

Continuing reading for Matt Fagerholm’s full “I Am Love” review.

I Am Love
Photo credit: Magnolia