Get Ready To Swoon. "I Am Love."

The new Italian film “I Am Love” now playing around the country concerns the privileged lives of a very wealthy Milanese family who made their fortune in textiles. They are all lovely to look at, have interests in the arts and live in a huge bunker like art deco villa outside of Milan. The heart and soul of the family and the film is Emma Recchi, a Russian who married into the wealthy Milanese family. With her husband away most of the time, and her 3 children grown and with lives of their own, Emma spends her days doing needlepoint and shopping with only the servants left for company. Her boredom and sadness is felt. Emma is always beautifully dressed and coiffed and will no doubt one day become like her mother in law played by the unrecognizable Marisa Berenson a handsome older woman. Emma at this stage of her life is more Italian than Russian and is played by the extraordinary Tilda Swinton who gives a performance of subtle depth and longing. I could not take my eyes off this wonderful actress who is on screen for most of the film. This very handsome movie opens with a lavish Christmas time birthday party for the aging Recchi patriarch, Edoardo and ends with a funeral that forever changes the lives of Emma and her family. This opening scene is long, richly fascinating and filled with marvelous details provided by a swooping gliding camera that moves through the beautiful rooms of this amazing mansion as the servants prepare for the party. Food, art & of course sex play important parts in this film, and the director Luca Guadagnino who is new to me, fills up the plates with generous portions of all the above along with many accruements that are usually found in melodramas and what some may refer to while holding their noses as women’s movies. There may those who will be turned off or simply not interested in this kind of a movie that is somewhat old fashioned, leisurely, erotic, emotional and demanding. To be sure there were parts of the film that I found a bit overdone (an intense close-up sex scene in the woods for one) but this is a very small fault for such a rich film. With an unexpected music score by John Adams this is easily one of the best films of 2010 and another Oscar worthy performance from Swinton