FILM REVIEW: I Am Love

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on July 15, 2010 - 11:18am

At Large

Other

I AM LOVE
Written and directed by Luca Guadagnino
Starring Tilda Swinton

Reviewed by Seth Rogovoy

Tilda Swinton, as a Russian matriarch married into a wealthy Milanese family, with Edoardo Gabbriellini, as a young chef.

With its sweeping camerawork, its stunning Italian settings, gorgeous scenes of cooking and food, its evocative score by contemporary minimalist John Adams, and Tilda Swinton’s radiant, alabaster face that reveals feeling through what it hides rather than what it exposes, I Am Love is a European classic – a contemporary setting of a familiar story – think Jane Austen (indeed, Swinton’s character is named Emma) or D.H. Lawrence – of what happens to the stifling mores of the upper class when modernity clashes with tradition. Brilliant, sexy, and compelling, even while it’s unsettling.

Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s award-winning editor-in-chief and cultural critic.

Playing at the Triplex in Great Barrington and the Little Cinema in Pittsfield, Mass.

Bookmark/Search this post with: