I Am Love

The luxurious, carefully ordered lives of the Recchis, a distinguished upper-class Milanese family, are disrupted when its stylish Russian-immigrant matriarch Emma (Tilda Swinton, speaking Russian-accented Italian) plunges into a scandalous and passionate affair with a friend of her grown son Edo (Flavio Parenti). Emma is the seemingly devoted wife of Tancredi (Pippo Delbono), who is heir to a textiles fortune. But when Edo befriends a talented chef named Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini) and makes plans to open a restaurant, Emma's interest is piqued—in no small part because of Antonio's way with prawns (Swinton lustily enjoys same in a scene she later referred to as “prawnography”). Emma's world is further rocked by the discovery that her daughter Elisabetta (Alba Rohrwacher), a student in London, is a lesbian. By the time Emma finally visits Antonio, this genteel, repressed woman is particularly vulnerable to the emotions that quickly overwhelm her, leading to a torrid coupling. A sumptuous cinematic feast, comparable to Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman, filmmaker Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love is anchored by a star turn from Swinton and a sensual, throbbing score by contemporary composer John Adams. While it may seem like a tawdry melodramatic throwback to the Douglas Sirk weepies from the 1950s, it plays on an operatic scale. Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Luca Guadagnino and costar Tilda Swinton, cast and crew interviews (71 min.), a “Moments on the Set” behind-the-scenes featurette (15 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is the BD-Live function. Bottom line: a solid extras package for an engaging film.] (S. Granger)