Director: Luca Guadagnino
Writer: Barbara Alberti, Ivan Cotroneo, Walter Fasano
Stars: Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabbriellini
Synopsis: Emma left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. Now a member of a powerful industrial family, she is the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled. One day, Antonio, a talented chef and her son’s friend, makes her senses kindle.
There’s always a first time for everything. First kiss. First acquired taste. First designer brand item bought. First salary. First time discovering a movie or director. In 2012, I wasn’t as much of a film expert as I am now. I was part of an active local literary scene when I encountered a different visual language of alternative cinema than the one I was accustomed to watching while growing up. I remember that writing mentor we had, she had very pointy black eyes and wild curly hair. We were sitting together in this cafe, waiting for other friends -poets, directors, short story authors, dancers- to join us, gushing over Tilda Swinton whom we both adored. This androgynous human being, an artist defying gender expression in a time when it was still revolutionary to be chameleonic, working her way through roles regardless of gender she’s playing. My writing mentor whispered in my ears, “Did you watch I Am Love? If not, do yourself a favor and watch it.”
Swinton plays Emma, a calm, kind woman married into wealth. She lives a life of luxury and excess but lacks passion. As a latent passionate woman, we viewers walk with her on this journey of self-exploration and finding the eros in her dead life as she starts an affair with her son’s friend, a chef, while handling the lives of her sons and daughter. Emma meets Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), her son’s friend, and this awakens something within her that had long been dead, that neither riches nor palaces can satisfy in her poetic soul. As parties and festivities continue non-stop in the hallways of large mansions, Emma hides in her room, knitting and dozing off. Emma’s senses are reawakened through Antonio’s cooking, and that stirs the haute bourgeoisie domesticity she’s been comfortable in, though unhappily, arousing her into someone entirely different.
Back in the day I had no clue who Luca Guadagnino was. I was director-oriented, but seeking the director of a random film I liked was not on my radar back in the day. My entire focus was on Swinton. However, as I analyzed the film more, I realized there was a reason Swinton portrayed that ethereal being- delicate and feminine, unlike her more enigmatic, gender-defying roles. Some of these roles veered into the menacing lane, while others were more ambiguous, like a transparent fluid. Swinton, like water, takes the shape of every medium she is put in, regardless of the genre she’s starring in.
Guadagnino channels Éric Rohmer and Wong Kar-wai somewhat in this film. He traps the characters in frames within frames, utilizing wide shots to emphasize their lack of individuality and the insignificance of individuals within the larger context of powerful oligarch families. His meticulous attention to detail here bizarrely diverts from his later freer pictures, where the detail is more character-focused than aesthetic and design-focused. It’s a strange faithfulness to form that strangely seems out of the ordinary for him, resembling a Merchant Ivory production in the larger context. But at its heart, I Am Love is a Guadagnino picture to the core, with his complicated relationships, projection of desire, fluid sexuality, and characters yearning for what they can’t have.
Guadagnino’s sensual piece of cinema, part of his self-described Desire trilogy, relies on the awakening of the senses. A young Alba Rohrwacher portrays a fragile artist who conceals her truth as a lesbian from her family. Gabbriellini plays Antonio, the sensual and rebellious chef who steals Swinton’s heart. Beauty is the main word in this film, it’s insane seeing how Guadagnino’s outlook on life has changed with his more recent films, as his first three have nothing but pure refined beauty, gorgeous settings, and dazzling people falling in and out of love. There is no place for the gruesome or the gross-out in his Desire trilogy, so it’s his most restrained work, and his most poetic at that. Bringing to mind how Martin Scorsese found violence in The Age of Innocence, even with all the confinements of the period piece.
The wardrobe alone is a feast for fashion aficionados. Raf Simons brings to life every small detail in Emma’s fancy world through her outfits but also the assortment of Birkin and Hermes bags she casually carries around and places nonchalantly as a woman accustomed to the highest status of living without a care in the world. The jewelry, both elegant and perfectly worn by Emma, enhances her ethereal presence as she moves throughout the film like a mid-century ghost. As for the soundtrack, those pre-existing compositions by John Adams completely fit the mood, seeping underneath the skin, further complicating Emma’s situation as a bridge between two opposing worlds; those of her motherhood and member of the bourgeoisie, and a passionate wild lover.
I Am Love is a film for those who want to taste the screen and feel the silence. It’s a movie for the dreamers, those who still take long walks on the beach, and despite it shifting tonally completely at the end, it is still a soothing feature made for audiences who exist beyond a high-tech world.
