I Am Love (2010)
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Reviews Counted: 118
Fresh: 95 | Rotten: 23
It stumbles into melodrama, but I Am Love backs up its flamboyance with tremendous visual style and a marvelous central performance from Tilda Swinton.
Average Rating: 7.5/10
Critic Reviews: 32
Fresh: 27 | Rotten: 5
It stumbles into melodrama, but I Am Love backs up its flamboyance with tremendous visual style and a marvelous central performance from Tilda Swinton.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 15,257
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Movie Info
This lavish, sprawling drama from filmmaker Luca Guadagnino has drawn numerous comparisons to the films of Luchino Visconti for the grace with which it plumbs the inner workings of the Italian upper crust. Edoardo Recchi Sr. (Gabriele Ferzetti) is the aging patriarch of a Milanese clan that has amassed a significant fortune over the years through shrewd investments in the textile business. Edoardo Sr. has a beautiful wife, Allegra (Marisa Berenson), and the two have a reliable and dependable
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Cast
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Tilda Swinton
Emma, Emma Recchi -
Flavio Parenti
Edoardo Jr., Edoardo Re... -
Edoardo Gabbriellini
Antonio, Antonio Biscag... -
Alba Rohrwacher
Betta Recchi, Elisabett... -
Pippo Delbono
Tancredi, Tancredi Recc... -
Maria Paiato
Ida Marangon -
Diane Fleri
Eva Ugolini -
Mattia Zaccaro
Gianluca, Gianluca Recc... -
Waris Ahluwalia
Mr. Kubelkian -
Gabriele Ferzetti
Edoardo Recchi Sr. -
Marisa Berenson
Allegra Recchi -
Chiara Tomarelli
Anita
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I Am Love Trailer & Photos
All Critics (118) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (96) | Rotten (24) | DVD (3)
The grand architecture of Milan and the icy rhythms of composer John Adams set the tone for this elegant Italian drama about the suffocating power of family, wealth, and tradition.
Top CriticThere's no getting around the fact that this is elegant soap opera,. It won't appeal to every taste. But it's sensational to look at, powerfully acted, and delivers a bang for the emotional buck.
Despite a superb cast and a fabulous look, the picture collapses under the weight of its lofty pretensions, especially in the black hole of the last act, where it topples into near-absurdity.
If you're not in the mood, the whole thing will probably seem pretty silly. But if you are -- oh, if you are -- I Am Love may be the richest, tastiest truffle you're likely to savor all summer.
An intimate, quiet and even slow movie, its subtle shadings veil turbulent emotions.
I Am Love falls into the select category of films that are easier to admire than like.
...a frustratingly uneven bit of over-the-top filmmaking...
The marriage of music and image seldom gets better than this.
For me the obvious attempts at enhancing lushness, rapture, and emotional swings were not connecting. I couldn't help noticing it was trying too hard.
Tilda Swinton is both imperious and vulnerable ... in this lush romantic melodrama that harks back to the heady days of Visconti and Antonioni.
Though a flimsy melodrama -- so overdone that it often collapses under filmmaker Luca Guadagnino's ineffable sense of bloat -- Swinton saves the day.
Tilda Swinton shines in overcooked melodrama.
A high class soap opera
full review at Movies for the Masses
When the picture ends in full-blown, melodramatic, raise-the-roof fortissimo, we realise everything that had come before (the highs and the lows) was a tantric tease of a crescendo, leading up to an almighty finale.
I am not a fan of romantic movies but I Am Love dives into its romance with such reckless abandon and such an over the top affection for cinema that I could not resist.
The magnificent Tilda Swinton shines as a woman who discovers a whole new emotional life through a young lover who happens to be a chef. His food leads to a sensual awakening.
I Am Love is like an impressionist painting, an artwork of thoughtful brushstrokes, each one adding a richness to the overall effect
You get the feeling Guadagnino wanted to send the same thrill up the spine of jaded modern moviegoers that audiences got at the movies a half-century ago, and in this "I Am Love" succeeds wildly.
The highest praise is that it lives up to its extravagant title
I'm calling 'I Am Love' the best movie of the year to date; a companion viewer called it 'repulsive'... Does one opinion invalidate the other? The movie is complex enough to invite such questions, and rich enough to resist answers.
Exaggerated yet elegant, opulent and sensual, it's a leisurely-paced European art-house melodrama that's made its way into the cineplex.
A film I wasn't waiting for by a filmmaker I was unaware of just shows up and blows me away. I like that.
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Foreign Titles
- I Am Love (DE)
- I Am Love (Io sono l'amore) (UK)
At the first sight this story, written by Cudagnino himself, might seem like an elegantly made drama about family hierarchy but quite soon we realize that Guadagnino is telling his story through Emma Recchi who has come to Italy from Russia. She has always been kinda outsider in this country and especially in Recchi's wealthy family. When Emma's son Edoardo introduces his friend Antonio to her things turn somewhere very unexpected for Emma. Through young and charming young Antonio Emma soon begins to wake up from his daily life in Recchi family and it's routined life.
What Cudagnino has achieved here is without a doubt nothing short of stunning in terms of visual language. With intoxicating camerawork by Yorick Le Saux and grandiotic musical score from John Adams, Io sono L'amore is a film which has rare hypnotic quality. Cudagnino's aesthetic language is something to behold. With highly symbolic, if a bit pretentious, use of food and landscapes and occasional flashes of surreal and dreamlike daydreams, Cudagnino takes us into the journey through cinematic netherworld.
Emma Recchi, here played by outstanding Tilda Swinton, is woman who begins to open her eyes and who little by little finds a way to start her life from the clean slate. Swinton acts her role with beautiful nuances and give us one of the most complex characters in her career.
I find Io Sono L'amore as a deeply heartfelt film. It is one of those films which has a rare power to touch heart in way that not many film can. This is a film that lives through it's characters emotions. There are moments of beauty, passion, love, tragedy and finally even a great sadness here. This is an emotionally devastating journey like no other and when the final dreamy images of possible another chance somewhere far away hit the screen it is sight to behold.