*This film made the festival circuit including Toronto in September and Sundance in January. It has opened commercially in several European countries and opens in limited release in the United States on 18 June.
Is there anything Tilda Swinton can’t do as an actress? She has graced the screen for more than two decades now (but with wide recognition only coming in the last ten years) with wonderful performances in roles as varied as an icy queen in The Chronicles of Narnia and a ruthless career lawyer in Michael Clayton for which she won an Oscar. Now she stars as Emma Recchi, a Russian émigré living in Milan, married into a wealthy family in the Italian film I Am Love (Io sono l’amore). But she out-streeps Meryl Streep by donning a Russian accent in a role that is spoken entirely in Italian with a smattering of Russian.
Emma is married to Tancredi, the son of a textiles magnate, whose birthday is being celebrated by the whole family in the opening sequence. We also meet their three children, Edo, Gianluca and Elisabetta. The patriarch knows he is not long for this earth and makes a surprise announcement that the family business will be left in the hands of both Tancredi and Edo.
This early celebration sequence is key for establishing the familial relationships at work. There is a warmth inside the great walls of the family mansion that is starkly contrasted with the cold gray winter outside that director Luca Guadagnino continually cuts to. We see Emma as a devoted mother, very much involved in her children’s lives while Tancredi is a bit more distant, even from his wife. Perhaps that is what the grandfather has seen to cause him to hand equal control to the two men.
But like any family (in cinema at least) there are hidden (and not so hidden) secrets. Edo’s real dream is to be a chef, although his good friend Antonio is far more skilled than he is. The two have plans to open a restaurant together in San Remo. And then Emma accidentally discovers, by happening upon a letter written to Edo, that Elisabetta has taken a female lover while in London. At the time of the letter Elisabetta only has confidence in Edo to hold the secret, which she knows will be damning in the eyes of her father.
It seems these revelations, as they come to Emma, are the impetus for her to make a leap of her own – into the arms of Antonio. Emma’s love for Antonio comes to her while enjoying a lunch in his restaurant. As she consumes the miraculous shrimp appetizer he’s prepared, she herself is consumed with passion. This is accompanied by a small stylistic flourish when the other two women at the table kept in shadow while a single overhead spotlight shines down on Emma intercut with slow motion close-ups of her digging into the dish.
Guadagnino sprinkles these little flourishes throughout the film. There is a conscious attempt here to recall the Italian cinema of the 1960s beginning with the opening credits which are designed exactly like those older films. With a snow-covered Milan as the backdrop it’s even difficult to tell if the images are black and white or color.
It is the freedom Emma’s children allow themselves which allows her to be free. There is an obvious reflection of this when, after Elisabetta returns from London with a cropped haircut (representing the new person she is – a woman allowing herself to love another woman openly), Emma has Antonio cut off her long locks as she has allowed herself the freedom to look outside her marriage for love.
The film is ostensibly about foreigners and outsiders. Emma may have completely assimilated into Italian culture and more than that – into the culture of the wealthy upper crust – after her Russian upbringing, but she remains a kind of prisoner to her world with no real power in the family decision making which is always carried out by the men. Likewise, two of her children are living their own kind of outsider existences with Elisabetta as a lesbian and Edo having no strong desire to carry on the family business.
Italian storytelling has a grand history connected to Italian opera and I Am Love is itself operatic not only in its dramatic narrative, but also in its musical score which is an amalgam of several overtures by the opera composer John Adams. In fact, the film’s title comes directly from the libretto of the aria “La mamma morta” from Andrea Chénier by Umberto Giordano. The turning point of the film hinges on an event that can hardly be anticipated. It is a shock so perfectly executed by Guadagnino’s direction that I let out a genuine and audible gasp. This event is not played for cheap effect in any way, but allows Emma to make her final decision, which occurs to the tune of an operatic overture blasting away on the soundtrack. And then notice the extended look she exchanges with Elisabetta and you’ll understand exactly how all the pieces have necessarily fallen into place for Emma to take charge of her life.
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