I Am Love

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabbriellini and Gabriele Ferzetti
Releasing in cinemas: 24 June 2010
Rated: MA 15+

Somewhere there must be an audience for shows like The Bold and the Beautiful about the dubious escapades of the rich and famous. This film has much in common. There may be saving aspects to I Am Love, however they’re hard to find in this pretentious long-winded load of old cobblers concerning an wealthy Italian family as dysfunctional as that in City Island, but not nearly as entertaining. Actually the movie starts well enough, with monochromatic images of snow-mantled Milan under stylized opening credits suggesting a Luchino Visconti period saga.

The opening scenes reinforce the Visconti feeling - sumptuous in setting and swirling camerawork, as Emma (Tilda Swinton) mistress of the Milan house of Recchi supervises the birthday party of her father-in-law Edoardo Recchi Snr. (Gabriele Ferzetti); contrasting the flurry of activity by the servants with the starchy formality above stairs. At his party, Grandfather Edoardo decides to retire from running his textile empire which has made the Recchi fortune. To the family’s dismay, he leaves the company in the charge of his son - Emma’s husband - Tancredi Recchi (Pippo Delbono) and grandson Edo (Flavio Parenti).

Edo seems more interested in starting a restaurant with his friend the chef Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), who turns up at the birthday party bearing a cake. Then things start falling apart in the Recchi household. Daughter Betta (Alba Rohrwacher) finds she has lesbian tendencies, while Emma unwittingly starts a bucolic ‘Lady Chatterley’ fling with Antonio. Tancredi wants to sell the company, while Edo prefers to retain the family interest. Finally Edo comes to suspect his mother’s liaison with Antonio, all plodding along to a melodramatic clunky conclusion if you’re still awake.

While the first half hour or so is moderately intriguing, beautifully albeit languidly presented, about this stage the wheels come off and any sign of Visconti disappears in a welter of affectation. It’s hard to be interested or care for these blatantly rich, self-absorbed people. When a major plot motivation is soup, and unintentionally risible moments as when Tancredi grabs his coat from a rain-drenched Emma.

Even the fluid cinematography becomes rugged at times, despite some tricky tracking down stairs; while the editing has strange moments. A sharp cut from a steamy love scene looks like a mistake, and there’s a leftover indistinguishable shot suddenly inserted among the end titles.

Director Luca Guadagnino (Melissa P) appears to have a love of weird symbolic images. The sensual fumblings in the backroom between Emma and Antonio are inter-cut with shots of crawling bugs. What happened to geysers or raging surf in movies of the 50s? These heavy handed attempts to be ‘artistic’ drag the picture down.

Fortunately the fine actor Tilda Swinton (Burn After Reading) manages - against the odds - a noteworthy performance. She has that slightly gaunt hungry look, yet radiates a formal beauty in the early scenes, becoming suitably ravished by the end of the film. She gives a degree of credence to an otherwise unlikely scenario.

You may have gathered the film wasn’t my film of the month, indeed I wanted to go home halfway through. But for die hard fans of The Bold and The Beautiful it might be worth a look, if they don’t mind sub-titles and are very patient.

John Bale