I Am Love

Dir: Luca Guadagnino

2009

****

In 2009 Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton were reunited after working together on the director’s debut feature, The Protagonists, made ten years previous. 1999’s The Protagonists is a proper film student film and I couldn’t bare it, and being a former film student I know what I’m talking about (and also hate all the films I made at film school). There was something about it though, a foretelling of something to come and I’m astonished at Guadagnino development in those ten years. Much like his debut, I Am Love is more style over substance. but there is a third entity at play that makes it somewhat unique. It is absolutely drenched in chic and sophistication and Tilda Swinton is utterly captivating. The film follows the wealthy Recchi family, a first and second-generation textile manufacturers in Milan. Tancredi Recchi (Pippo Delbono) and his wife Emma (Swinton) are hosting a formal dinner party for Tancredi's still-formidable but ailing father, Edoardo Sr. (Gabriele Ferzetti), patriarch and founder of the family business, who is celebrating his birthday. As the many servants bustle about, the family note with disappointment the news that Edoardo Jr. (Flavio Parenti), Tancredi and Emma's eldest son, lost his race the day of his grandfather's birthday. Edoardo Jr. arrives from that race, having informed the family that he has invited a girlfriend. She is Eva, of the prominent Ugolini family, whom he plans to marry. Edoardo Jr.'s young adult siblings, Gianluca (Mattia Zaccaro) and Elisabetta, complain of yet again being served ukha, Edoardo Jr.'s favourite dish, a special soup his mother Emma, who is Russian by birth, has made for him since childhood. The grandfather announces he is passing the family business to his son, Tancredi, who has long worked with him, and also, unexpectedly, to Edoardo Jr. At the dinner, Tancredi and Emma's daughter Elisabetta (Alba Rohrwacher), who attends school in London, presents her grandfather with one of her artworks, a photograph, despite a tradition of presenting one another paintings. He is disappointed, but encouraged by his glamorous wife Allegra "Rori" Recchi (Marisa Berenson) to gloss over his disappointment. Power, tradition and abundance are clearly three cancers, slowly eating away at the otherwise perfect family. Later during the birthday celebration, Edoardo Jr. receives a surprise visit from Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), the chef who defeated him in the race earlier that day. Antonio brings a beautiful cake as a gift, and Edoardo, flattered by the gesture, introduces him to his mother. After the party Emma discovers a CD with a note from Elisabetta to her brother Edoardo revealing that Elisabetta is a lesbian. She tells her brother of an encounter with a woman and that she is in love with another woman. Meanwhile, Edoardo Jr. visits Antonio in Antonio's father's restaurant. They later make plans to open a restaurant together on some property Antonio's father owns in San Remo. Months later, Emma is having lunch at Antonio's restaurant with Rori and Eva, and she is aroused while relishing a prawn dish he prepares for her. Elisabetta returns to Milan, with her hair cut short, and invites Emma to go with her to Nice to look for a venue for Elisabetta's art exhibition. While stopping in San Remo en route to Nice to surprise her daughter, Emma spots Antonio, follows him, and eventually speaks to him outside of a book shop. She goes with him to his house in the hills above the city, and they begin their affair. Meanwhile, in London, Edoardo Jr. struggles as his father and other family members seek to sell the family business to foreign investors. He visits his sister and tells her of the future of the business and his opposition to the sale. On her second trip to San Remo, under the pretext of discussing a menu for the formal dinner she will host for the foreign investors who are buying the Recchi family business, Emma spends the day with Antonio, and the two enjoy passionate lovemaking. Emma tells Antonio how Tancredi met her during a trip to Russia hunting for art treasures. Antonio cuts Emma's blonde hair, a long lock of which falls unnoticed to the terrace, where Edoardo Jr. finds it during his own visit after the London meeting. They cook together, and Emma teaches him to make ukha. On the night of the dinner at the Recchi villa for the investors, a conversation between Edoardo Jr. and Eva is overheard, revealing she is pregnant with his child. Antonio prepares ukha. When Edoardo sees this dish served, he instantly realizes his mother is having an affair with Antonio. He leaves the dinner table in a fury. Emma follows him outside to the garden and alongside the pool she tries to talk to him. At this point they speak Russian. In pulling away from Emma's outstretched hand Edoardo loses his balance, falls, strikes his head on the edge of the pool's stone trim, and falls into the pool. He sustains a cerebral haemorrhage and dies in hospital. At the cemetery following the funeral, Tancredi tries to console Emma. She tells him that she is in love with Antonio. He responds by telling her "You don't exist." Emma rushes home and changes her clothes while her housekeeper helps her pack her things to leave. Before she leaves, she exchanges a knowing glance with her daughter, who it appears understands her mother's desire to follow her heart. Eva, who has hardly been noticed by Edoardo's family since his death, clutches her abdomen as she calls out to Eduardo Jr.'s siblings and grandmother, revealing her pregnancy. When the family members look back into the foyer where Emma was standing, she is gone. During the final credits, Emma and Antonio are seen lying together inside a cave. The opening credits alone are better than most best picture Oscar nominees and even the most mundane of scenes are dripping in decadence. It’s is ridiculously beautiful, as in, it is ridiculous and beautiful. However, it is so melodramatic that it is like sucking on a ripe lemon. The great Operas are exactly the same, take away the flamboyance and melodrama and what you are left with would look out of place in just about every other environment. I don’t mind this, there are echos of classic Italian cinema and the film is a visual feast from beginning to end but in truth this is a long perfume advert with a script and no actual perfume. The film marked the beginning of Guadagnino's self-described Desire trilogy, preceding A Bigger Splash (2015) and Call Me by Your Name (2017), a good film but nowhere near as masterful as the trilogy’s grand finale.