Io sono l'amore (2009) Reviews

• Bold and Shameless In The Best Possible Way

  willandthomas-picturehou2010-07-15

  I was amused and entertained. Taken, very taken by how seriously it takes itself but I don't mean that in an patronizing way. For those people the subject treated is of paramount importance. The past and the future mingling in a world where profit commands. The young son, a stunning, Flavio Parenti, is the one attached to the old traditions. A rich capitalist with a socialist sensibility. Tilda Swinton runs the gamut of emotions and she does it beautifully. Details are terribly important here and, I must confess, I thought of Visconti, specially because Violante Visconte di Modrone is part of the cast. Who is Mr Guadagnino, the director? Where does he come from? He seems incredibly sure of himself. Costumes, interiors, landscapes are a visual feast. The score is also a very bold touch. Marisa Berenson (Barry Lyndon) and Gabriele Ferzzetti (L'Avventura) are added pleasures to this unexpected, if sometimes irritating, treat.

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• The bold and the beautiful

  susannah-straughan-12010-04-27

  The poster for Luca Guadagnino's film shows a regal Tilda Swinton in an eye-catching red dress surrounded by her sober-looking family. In another version, the frock has undergone a cheeky digital makeover to a shocking pink that matches the movie's bold, declaratory title. The symbolism might seem a little obvious, but this is a story in which one woman's passion comes bursting to the surface – with tragic consequences. "Something part palace, part prison, part museum" is how star and producer Swinton envisaged the house at the centre of this contemporary drama about the Recchis, a wealthy Milanese family. Opening with a series of almost monochrome shots of a snowbound Milan, Guadagnino closes in on the elegant but forbidding 1930s mansion, where Russian-born Emma (Swinton) and her husband Tancredi (Pippo Delbono) are preparing to host a dinner party. On the surface, Emma is an attractive middle-aged woman, perfectly at ease with her three grown-up children and comfortable within the sumptuous trappings of Italian society. Guadagnino and cinematographer Yorick Le Saux linger over the chandeliers, wall hangings and gleaming napery that indicate decades of affluent living. But as the white-gloved lackeys hover over the birthday celebrations of ageing patriarch Edoardo, we sense that something – or someone – is about to shatter the family's much-prized unity. Soon there is an announcement about the future of the family textile business, but it isn't the defining event of this opening set piece. Guadagnino's interest lies not in soap opera-style financial wrangling, but in how two of Emma's children unwittingly lead her towards a personal epiphany. First her daughter Betta (Alba Rohrwacher), a talented artist, causes a minor ripple by declaring that she's now more interested in pursuing photography. Emma's subsequent discovery of a heartfelt note inside a CD box reveals that Betta has fallen deeply in love – with a girl. During the meal, a young man turns up looking for Emma's son Edo (Flavio Parenti). He awkwardly refuses to join the party, but it's clear that Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini) a handsome and supremely talented chef, has struck a chord with the lady of the house. So, as Edo eagerly makes plans to open a restaurant with his friend, Emma is drawn into a high-risk affair. The power of Swinton's performance lies not in her mastery of Italian dialogue but in her gradual, unspoken surrender to passion, over the dictates of convention. This is a film in which speeches are, for the most part, far less important than the sense of underlying tension generated by John Adams's operatic score and Le Saux's restless camera work. Late in the film there's a sinuous tracking shot that follows Emma's impulsive descent to the basement kitchen for a stolen moment with her lover. Guadagnino's willingness to take risks in the pursuit of what Swinton has called "pure cinema" is what distinguishes this film from other stories of forbidden love involving ladies who are old enough to know better. Epicureans will experience as frisson as Emma is seduced by Antonio's lovingly prepared prawn dish. The lingering shots of those seductive crustaceans could have been ridiculous, but they're another small and believable step in Emma's awakening to the possibility of a new love. When the action moves to the glorious countryside around San Remo, Emma allows Antonio to cut her hair, in an apparent nod to her daughter's recent change of style. Her rebellion reaches a crescendo in the extraordinary al fresco sex scene, shot in huge close ups to the accompaniment of teeming insect life that threatens to drown out everything else. Guadagnino and Swinton first worked together on The Protagonists (1999) and this latest collaboration evolved over a period of nearly 11 years. It's too early to say whether they can be measured against some of their inspirations –Tolstoy, Flaubert , Hitchcock and Visconti – but there is much to admire in this stylish and well-acted drama. There are faults: some of the camera placements are too artily self-conscious and Emma's interactions with her husband and children often feel rather perfunctory. Unlike Visconti's The Leopard, this isn't an in-depth exploration of family dynamics buckling under the forces of history. But neither the director nor the star can be accused of timidity in the way they embrace the protagonist's headlong rush towards her destiny. And even the Master of Suspense would have applauded the shocking climax of a confrontation in the garden, which made me jump out of my seat.

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• Home Cookin'

  ferguson-62010-06-28

  Greetings again from the darkness. A really good film from writer/director Luca Guadagnino and a terrific performance from Tilda Swinton. The film centers on power and family and trust and self-discovery ... and the complexities of each. As a young, working class Russian, Emma (Tilda Swinton) is whisked away to marriage and life in the aristocracy of Milan. She dutifully raises her kids and organizes huge dinners and parties at their mansion as the Rechhi's entertain business clients and their own family. It is during these parties that we realize Emma is technically part of the family, but really is still an outsider. She escapes to her own space once the events are running smoothly. Being an avid cook herself, she easily clicks with a brilliant young chef introduced to the family by her own son. Very little doubt where it's headed at this point as Emma unleashes the pent up energy she has been forced to hide. While we are very aware that the upper crust has learned to look the other way with infidelity, that's not the case with the Rechhi's and their Russian wife/mother. The brilliance in the film is that it shows how the younger generation doesn't really fit any better than Emma. The difference is that they are part of the fabric and will be allowed more rope than an outsider. Still it is painful to watch Emma and her son, who can't quite adapt to the family business. Better yet, to watch her with her daughter, who confesses her preference for other women. Emma sees herself in these two, but doesn't have the same freedom. Her best ally is the caretaker who seems to understand the multiple levels on which this family functions. Fascinating interactions and complex writing make this a film for film lovers. There is so little dialogue, but so much is said with a glance or head nod. Many U.S. writers could learn a thing or two. Must also mention the startling score by John Adams. It is quite operatic, which plays along with the themes of the film.

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• Staggeringly Beautiful...

  JoshuaDysart2010-03-08

  I can't describe the power of this film, and I can't stop thinking about it either. There's a negative review on here that says to go see MICHAEL CLAYTON instead and not to waste your time. Well, if a movie about plot, overly drawn characters and artifice, all shot by the book, is what you're looking for, then yes... this probably isn't the movie for you. But if you like people more than stories. If you want to see film-making at its most graceful and organic and inventive, if you want a musical score that will turn a sidelong glance into an operatic overture, then this IS the movie for you. It is a baroque masterwork. A cathedral of a film. Cold as stone but inspiring the soul. Tilda Swinton is a goddess. She says so little, but communicates so much. There's an entire ocean of emotion inside or her, spilling out of her eyes. I cried twice at this film. Once because of the subject matter and then again at the delicacy of the film-making. Don't let people with conservative tastes and conventional ideas of film and story tell you not to go see this movie. They are robbing you of experiencing pure emotive cinema.

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• Lovely, Lush, Graceful, Mesmerizing

  jomarbut2010-08-10

  This is a wonderful Italian film that is lush, sensual, beautiful, and operatic in tone. It has grand scale and little moments. It stars beautiful Tilda Swinton as Emma, dressed in Jill Sander couture with Hermes and Fendi bags. She is a Russian woman married into the rich Italian Rechhi industrial family. She has two grown children, Eduardo and Betta. They all live in a grand villa, surrounded by gates with doormen, maids, footmen, and a housekeeper. Everything is so quiet, so lush, so graceful, so perfect, so in its place. She is the perfect mother, wife, housekeeper, the perfect embodiment of a rich Italian's wife. She knows and accepts the demands of the role of the fabric magnate's wife, and as the daughter-in-law to the elder Recchi patriarch and matriarch. She is smiling, gracious, beautiful and very taut and controlled without being cold. But she does not have a real grasp on who she is. When asked how she came to Italy, she says that her father was an art restorer and her husband was visiting them and began dating her. When they married, he brought her to Italy, changed her name to Emma, and she took on her new persona. She cannot recall her Russian name; knows only that she was nicknamed Kitesh. (She's not suffering from amnesia.) She looks to others for their reactions to events as if to gage her reaction. She gazes carefully around her as if not a part of the gathering but apart from it. She meets a friend of her son's, a young chef named Antonio and eats one day at his restaurant. Suddenly, emotions are awakened that may have been suppressed. She's drawn to the young chef. They have an affair. She changes her behavior, cuts her hair, cooks with him, spends time away with him at his remote mountain home, and shares a Russian recipe that she cooks for her son. When Eduardo discovers that Antonio is cooking his mother's recipe, he jumps to the ultimate conclusion which she does not deny. But the argument that follows leads to tragedy and the family's undoing. She tells her husband "You no longer know who I am" and flees when the affair is discovered as her husband has told her "You do not exist." And he may be right. She may not know herself well enough to exist on her own terms, only on those given to her by a man. How he defines her is how she defines herself. At the end of the film, two arguments can be made: she is either a woman suppressed, whose awakening came when she devoured the food and the young chef. Or, she is a woman who is a blank canvas, one of those women who change with each man they are with. She let her husband rename her; she took the Italian family traditions; she looks to her mother in law and father in law for approval; she has no opinions of her own; she is a dutiful wife, mother, daughter-in-law, etc. And then, with the young chef, she shares his love of food, of the remote mountain retreat; she lets him cut her hair; she dresses more casually; she will give up everything to be with him. She may be in love but she may have also taken on yet another persona. The most intriguing part is Tilda Swinton, who is such a chameleon in all of her films. She embodies a part like no one can, acting as blank canvas, painting the character in subtle details. She is fearless in this role. She should be nominated and should win an Oscar and other awards. You have to watch her, those eyes, that mouth and jaw, the slight emotional changes that flit across her face and her reactions to events. Amazing.

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