Known for translucently pale skin and chiselled features, Tilda Swinton has always cut a striking onscreen figure. I Am Love from Sicilian director Luca Guadagnino transports the ice queen of arthouse to snowy Milan in an elegant and enthralling drama of surprising warmth.
Swinton is the odd-one-out in an Italian cast, but it works perfectly for her character, Emma, the Russian wife of the wealthy Tancredi Recchi. “Collected” by him on the Russian art scene, she has since become assimilated into Milan’s haute bourgeoisie. We first see Emma as a sort of continental Mrs Dalloway, meticulously preparing her household for a birthday dinner in honour of Tancredi’s father, the founder of the clan’s profitable textile empire. She is composed, her appearance immaculate; but when talk at the table turns to business succession she takes on an odd opacity, participating awkwardly in a family toast. She regards her grown-up children – golden boy Edo and artist Elisabetta – with fondness checked by the formal mood imposed by her father-in-law.
The scene hints at a great family saga in the vein of Visconti’s film The Leopard, while the opening credit’s curlicue font and wintry wide-shots suggest a cool update on the postcard-pretty beginnings of Golden Hollywood’s melodramas. Guadagnino draws magnificently on both elements. The dynastic males of the family face a changing business world in London boardrooms, whereas Emma finds herself attracted to her son’s friend Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), a gifted young chef. Only when her daughter tells her she is in love with another woman does Emma begin to seek her own freedom in Antonio, slipping away to see him in verdant Sanremo countryside.
Swinton’s Emma makes a fascinating protagonist, in what was previously the sole territory of Julianne Moore in films like ‘Far from Heaven’ and ‘The Hours’. Neither particularly self-perceptive nor introspective, and somewhat solitary and unconfiding, Emma is in theory a difficult character to read. However, Swinton plays her with flashes of interiority and makes her tenderness a defining characteristic. She is a sliver of a personality, consequently more likely to sympathise with others before she recognises her own particular feelings. Her affection for her children complicates her actions and leads to the film’s climax, devoid of moralising but richly powerful.
Ultimately, the plot soars above its appearance on the page because of Guadagnino and cinematographer Yorick Le Saux’s gift for telling the story in visual language. Their objective shots have a warmth and fluidity that would be hard to surpass; the camera always able to find the best vantage point, focus on the most interesting part of a composition, and then gracefully follow the movement of the scene. It’s a style that lends beauty to every detail in the shot (a plate of shrimp, cut hair, piles of clothes and bowls of transparent soup), but avoids the perfume-ad look of films like A Single Man. I Am Love is a sheer cinematographic delight that goes beyond being simply stylish: it trains the eye and intellect in the art of observation.
Online Review: I Am Love
