I Am Love - A Film by Luca Guadagnino

I had been wanting to see this film ever since reading the spate of reviews accompanying its US opening, but it took me a long time to get over to the Landmark Cinema out on East Houston Street.  (One of the unfortunate side effects of the DVD and on-line video revolution is that there are only a handful of theaters in Manhattan, most not centrally located, that show foreign films these days...)  It was worth the trip.  "I Am Love" puts in the shade most of the dreck that Hollywood cranks out these days under the heading of serious drama.  Two recognizable names among the cast - Tilda Swinton and Marisa Berenson - are supported by a large cast of Italian actors, many quite young and adorable (of both sexes).  The film is in Italian with English subtitles, except for a very small amount of dialogue in English and Russian.

The premise is that a young Russian woman (played by Swinton, Berenson plays her mother-in-law) is whisked off to Italy by the wealthy son of an Italian industrialist who has been visiting Russia to buy artwork, the young woman's father being an art restorer with whom he was doing business.  They marry and have three children - two sons and a daughter.  The film begins when the daughter is about to go to London to school and the sons are working in the family business, the first scene being a birthday party for the Italian industrialist, who announces that he is retiring and leaving his business to his son and grandson (the youngest son, his mother's favorite) to run.  From there the plot develops with various romantic and ideological entanglements over the course of the succeeding year or so.  This is not an action film, or a thriller.  It is a dramatic film taken at a sometimes leisurely pace, with gorgeous, sometimes perhaps too self-consciously artistic cinematography (some young women in the row behind me laughed out loud at one point -- definitely at the cinematic imagery of flowers that was being intercut with a sex scene).  There are a handful of sex scenes that verge on pornography, so those who are offended by frank depictions of nudity and sex are forewarned.

The film draws you in.  The music on the soundtrack is drawn mainly from old recordings of music by American composer John Adams, taken mainly from his early minimalist period - excerpts from Nixon in China, Shaker Loops, etc.  (Adams is credited at the beginning as "Music by John Adams" but I don't think much if any music was written specifically for the film, as most of it sounded familiar and the closing credits spent two screens listing all the excerpts from the old recordings.)  The music works very well with the story. The settings, mainly in a large residential mansion in Milano, locations in the city and the surrounding country-side, are spectacular.  One has a feeling of some depth in the exploration of character here, and many of these young Italian actors are quite extraordinary, especially the young fellow who plays Eduoardo, the sensitive youngest son.

I don't want to labor this with any plot spoilers, so I'll only add that this is very much worth seeing, and that it is so beautiful that I plan to acquire the DVD when it becomes available.

Also, that this is definitely for foodies!  An important plot element involves a handsome young chef, and there is an interesting concentration on food at several key points in the plot.  When I left the theater, it was shortly before 7PM and I wandered a few blocks into Little Italy because only Italian food would suffice after seeing this film!