I Am Love

It's been almost twenty-four hours since seeing Luca Guadagnino's film I Am Love, and over that course of that time my feelings about the film have started to gel. While walking out of it I didn't know what to think, and was kind of frustrated, but as I've thought back on it my opinion has gone up somewhat. I liked it, but still have some reservations.

The film deals with a bourgeoisie family in Milan. We begin at a birthday dinner for the patriarch, a man who owns a textile factory. He uses the occasion to hand over the reins to his son and grandson. His daughter-in-law (Tilda Swinton), is a Russian woman who has become totally assimiliated into the Italian life-style.

I knew almost nothing about this film going in, and I'm glad I didn't, because I had no idea where it was going. It was almost an hour into the film before the conflict arose. Up until that time it was a not uninteresting look at the members of the family, focusing on Swinton, and somewhat less on her son Edo and daughter Betta, who was in school in London and dealing with her sexuality.

A secondary character, Edo's friend Antonio, a chef, then moves to the forefront. I won't say more, but the plot development isn't particularly novel. The climax of the film is quite melodramatic, and recalls a kind of stodgy moralism from the nineteenth-century. Indeed, the name of Tolstoy is dropped during the course of the film, perhaps as a link to Anna Karenina. Like that novel, the trangression of adultery is dealt with harshly, and a character is made to suffer tragedy as punishment.

The film does have more layers than a simple tale of adultery, though. There's a great deal about business, as the family considers selling the company to make it more global (this is represented by a buyer who is both an American and a Sikh--certainly exotic for Italy). But the most dominant theme of the film is food as a metaphor for love. Two dinner parties bookend the film, and there is much made of the preparation of food. A dish of prawns triggers lust in one character, while a Russian fish dish turns out to be a huge plot point. Though it isn't as prevalent here as films such as Big Night or Babette's Feast, if the Food Network ever started running films they could show I Am Love.

Guadagnino's camera work is at times startling. It borders on film-school preciousness but ultimately avoids it, as he uses many quick cuts and closeups. He also makes great use of the weather, as the film starts in winter (I would have never dreamed it could snow in Milan) and then culminates in a drowsy summer in the mountains. Of course he also makes great use of the prodigious talents of Swinton, who gives a very restrained but percolating performance. She is certainly one of the best actresses working today.