Review: I Am Love (2009)

★★★☆☆

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Starring: Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Alba Rohrwacher

❝ HAPPY IS A WORD THAT MAKES ONE SAD. ❞

Synopsis: When Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton) meets Antonino Biscaglia (Edoardo Gabbriellini), she is introduced to a world of pleasures she never knew existed beyond her bourgeoisie lifestyle. 

This is a film you understand or you don't. It's plot is insignificant in the grand scheme of things - this is a film to be visually pleasing and looked at more than anything. Of course, Tilda Swinton played her role marvellously as a bourgeoisie housewife who discovered there was more beyond her well-off lifestyle. Themes were well addressed, from her daughter's new romantic encounter to Eduardo's overall sadness about his life. What I couldn't connect with was the characters themselves, regardless of how well they addressed their personal struggles. There was nothing there to make me care that Emma was discovering this new, natural and exciting love, and even in the end, her choice of wardrobe to stress her removal from that house and the confines of that life didn't make me applaud and burst with joy the way the pacing of that final scene demanded. It was beautiful to look at, and I highly congratulate the cameraman and cinematographer on the attention to detail and the exploration of how to shoot scenes. This is definitely a film for those who want to experience something new the way she did. Perhaps on a second viewing I may feel differently about it, but on first viewing, as much as I understood it, I couldn't find any more meaning beyond it. It's strange to give a movie Tilda Swinton is in a mere three stars, but the truth is that she carried this film with her performance and kept me interested along with some excellently detailed frames. I really wanted to like this more than I did.