REVIEW: 'I Am Love' proves a stunning modern classic
“I am Love,” easily one of the most sensual films I have ever seen, is a ravishing delight, an operatic melodrama of stunning beauty and luxuriant texture.
It is a thing elemental, a piece of art that works as pure, unadulterated hedonism, electrifying the senses with incandescent fire. It is a film out of time, donning the semblance of modernity, but hiding beneath those drab garments lies a musculature evocative of Visconti and classical European dramas of yesteryear.
“I am Love” opens in an ornate Milanese mansion where the Recchi family has gathered to hear whom the ailing patriarch (Gabriele Ferzetti) intends to anoint as the successor of his longstanding textile business and considerable fortune. In this moment, reminiscent of “King Lear,” we are introduced to Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton, who learned Italian for the role), the compliant and respectful wife of Tancredi (Pippo Delbono), the new head of the family, and mother to a grown son (Flavio Parenti) and daughter (Alba Rohrwacher) trying desperately to divest themselves of their patriarchal, industrialist roots and create fulfilling lives for themselves.
We understand that the business and the family are run with the same well-oiled precision as the looms we glimpse humming in a building nearby. But when Emma begins an affair with one of her son’s friends, a young chef named Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), it will set in motion a series of events that will tragically shatter the proud family.
Director Luca Guadagnino has made a labor of love and it shows in each and every frame. His exquisite attention to detail, the luminous cinematography and his ability to meld past and present cinematic sensibilities reward his brazen and operatic poetry.
“I am Love” is awash in elitist sensibilities (about food, art, etc.), and manages to both criticize and glamorize the lifestyle of ease, strongly suggesting that the idle hands of means are the devil’s playground.
Under Guadagnino’s sensual camera, eating is like sex. Antonio’s hands caress both his culinary creations and his lover’s skin with the same intense eroticism.
When he and Emma make love in a verdant field, even the insects participate, pollinating the flowers surrounding the writhing bodies. Is this an affair of the heart or something more primal?
Emma has had to literally bury her personality at the behest of her neglectful husband. In Antonio’s loins she finds both rebellion and redemption. It takes a cataclysm to free her and allow her to reclaim an identity she was forced to sublimate decades ago. It is not something she planned nor would ever desire, but it is up to the audience to judge her actions.
I AM LOVE
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Flavio Parenti, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Delbono
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Theater: Kimball’s
Rated: R (for sexuality and nudity)
Running time: 2 hours
GRADE: A
