Cast: Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Diane Fleri
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Screenplay: Luca Guadagnino
Studio: Mikado Films
Runtime: 120 mins
Genre: Foreign/Drama
Country: Italy
At the heart of Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love are two things - a sterling central performance and an opulent, exquisite filmmaking. Tilda Swinton, arguably one of the most fascinating actors working in the film industry today, is the central beating core of this rich, nuanced, grand Italian melodrama and her matriarch Emma Recchi, Russian-born and married into a clan of über-wealthy Milanese bourgeois, is a character so magnificently well drawn that it makes one think Swinton might as well read the London Tube map and we're still in thrall to her talents. This is an actor that veers mightily and fearlessly from one superlative performance to the next. She was the only dignified thing in The Chronicles of Narnia as the glacial White Witch, nabbed an Oscar gong for her gig as corporate bitch in Michael Clayton whilst eclipsing co-star George Clooney, delivered an unhinged, tempestuous performance as a freewheeling prostitute at last year's kidnap-thriller Julia, and now this. An Italian arthouse, to which she produced herself.
This harks back to the nostalgia-tinted days of 50's Douglas Sirk melodrama via 70's Hitchcock byway of Antonioni and Visconti's Italian cinema, which might seem to be a gross pastiche at first, but Guadagnino's sublime directing elegantly swerves this film from an arthouse trainwreck. It's tale might be a tad familiar, the clash of the old and new, as the ancient heirloom of the Recchi family is being handed down to the younger generation, to run the age-old textile business, reminiscent of Coppola's The Godfather and Visconti's The Leopard, but the approach is supremely stylish. Its operatic tone means cameras smoothly glide around the Recchi household, from corridors, to halls, to staircases, and introduces us to the key family members by inter-cutting through a dinner scene. We get to know them straight away and their criss-crossing of relationships with barely any exposition, but through a visual style. A stronghold of family foundation that would soon crumble when a sweeping force of change leaks through the gaps in the clan's tapestry.
Through all this, Emma remains a lovely wallflower. Only until her daughter rushes off to be with a girl. There is an eloquent scene when she discovers her daughter's letter outside a shop shown in superfluous editing of Emma's urgent reactions, sharp breathing, unfocused eyes, wearing a face of both surprise and realisation. She reacts not like a mother, but a woman who suddenly questions not only her daughter, but also herself. Swinton doesn't act this out, she embodies Emma through and through. Also, she gets to show off her Russian and Italian language skills. And Swinton guides this journey to self-awakening, as she falls passionately and gloriously in love with young earthy chef Antonio (her son Eduardo's best pal). Guadagnino frames one literally ravishing scene in which Emma dissolves into Antonio's lush prawn cocktail, lit by a headlight while the rest of the restaurant and everything else orbiting Emma fades away. It's an evocative set-piece, and says there is all to say off-setting food with carnal, basic human passion.
Guadagnino mounts a superb sense of pacing, as Emma and Antonio's illicit affair become known to her son Eduardo, taking this film into a tragic, heart-wrenching crescendo, a full-blown orchestra of misunderstandings, alienation and subsequent liberation. Emma's soaring pursuit for her inner self comes to full tilt at a funeral, with Swinton in an impressive transformation from an impeccably dressed wife to an earthy, liberated woman. This refined piece of human artefact in the Recchi gallery of solid traditions, learns to free herself from repression, a Russian tempest that was laid dormant from marriage, responsibilities and subservience. This is gorgeously sublime, liberating stuff.
Here is the first great film of 2010. Luca Guadagnino's operatic Italian melodrama I Am Love possesses a supreme understanding of cinema as an artform, operating visuals, tone and story to spellbinding precision. Above all, this high-class, exceptional study of a mother's existential awakening has a narrative build-up that bursts into a shattering, breathtaking climax.
Review by The Moviejerk © Janz
