Release: June 24

Running time: 119 minutes

Rating: MA 15+ (Strong Sex Scenes)

lo sono l'amore (I Am Love) is Luco Guadagnino's latest (bearable) feature film. With the help of Oscar winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton, Adaptation) and screenwriter Barbara Alberti (who claimed her prestige by creating the story for Lilana Cavani's masterpiece The Night Porter) I Am Love is a minor improvement compared to Guadagnino's previous works Melissa P. and Mundo Civilizado.

Swinton leads this film as an upper class wife who is need of breaking free from her family and repression towards them. Set in Milan, Italy, Emma Recchi (Swinton), a Russian emigrant becomes infatuated by a Chef (Edoardo Gabbirellini) who is conveniently a friend of her son, Edoardo (Flavio Parenti). Passions rise and one thing leads to another soon to change the life of Emma forever. Simple enough? Well it should have been.

The primary stand out problem was that the story wasn't nearly as simple as this. The first 40 minutes of the film was used to set up a series of unnecessary subplots involving the rest of her family. The Grandfather (Also by the name of Edoardo) passes the family business on to his son Tancredi (Emma's Husband) and his Grandson Edoardo Jr causing tension between the relationship of the two, don't get me wrong, the complexity between these characters was fascinating and well executed. Particularly when Edoardo has to be consoled by the family housemaid, for nobody else is there for him. Although whilst engaged in this storyline, the audience was pulled too far away from the story in which they supposed to be focused on. Emma's daughter Elizabeth (Alba Rohrwacher) also runs into havock trying to hide her lesbian orientation from her family. It basically becomes very confusing and complex, for all these subplots needed to be tied up at some point during the film while Emma's story remained the most interesting throughout. It was only until 40 minutes into the film the audience realized that it actually was about Tilda Swinton's character.

So let's concentrate on the character of Emma. Her story gave the true meaning of unconditional love, or even forbidden love at that, and well told. The way Emma initially connected with the Chef though his own passion of cooking food and her own passion of consuming food was fascinating. Both these characters were purely driven by their instinct towards each other although quite awkward towards the remaining characters. Emma's persona was one completely washed off from her mother (whose husband would stand by his quote 'we engrave our name in our country's history), suppressing her human, and even at times animal instincts towards others.

The most interested part of the whole film was the score by John Adams. It was stand out brilliant, like nothing I had ever seen before in this style or genre of film. A march type fanfare that blasted during all the ‘chase’ scenes. The audience weren’t sure if they should be clapping because of the enormous sound that was created that made particular scenes fast paced and exciting. Five stars on that behalf!

Emotional visuals took over the drama at times, creating shock value or even confusion to the audience rather than building suspense. The story was wrapped up quite quick at the end to give the viewers it's meaning or statement about love it wanted to make although the audience was thrown by this change of pace. It worried me that quite a few of the people laughed as the credits rolled. To my understanding it was blatantly because of sheer confusion as to what we were supposed to be focused on during the film. It’s a shame because it wasn’t funny, at all.

Quite a disappointment considering not only the talent that was behind the film but it had plenty of substance, everything needed to make a great film was there, it just needed to be polished up and fine tuned. Don't dismiss the film though. Visually it was stunning as well as the performances of all characters, all characters that are (actually) love.

Credit