The Details
- I Am Love
- Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabbriellini
- Directed by Luca Guadagnino
- Rated R. Opens Friday
- Beyond the Weekly
- I Am Love
- IMDb: I Am Love
- Rotten Tomatoes: I Am Love
Is there anything Tilda Swinton can’t do? In I Am Love, the British actress speaks Italian with a Russian accent as the wife of a wealthy Milanese businessman, and gives just as fabulous a performance as she would in her native tongue. Oh, and she also produced the film, spending seven years developing it with director Luca Guadagnino. It’s a passion project as well as a project about passion, a florid melodrama whose style ultimately overwhelms its narrative. Swinton’s Emma engages in a torrid affair with her son’s friend and business partner, while other illicit trysts and family betrayals go on around her. Guadagnino’s fluid visuals, full of long tracking shots and symbolic mirrors and doors, are wonderful to behold, but the plotting is pedestrian, and the characters are ill-defined. The more heightened the emotions become, the more the movie feels like a magazine spread rather than an involving story.
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