The core story of this movie: A seemingly happily married woman, Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton), falls in love with a gifted and soulful chef, Antonio Biscaglia (Edoardo Gabbriellini). The married woman is around 50; the chef is in his early 30s. The woman is married to the son of a wealthy industrialist; the chef is a close friend of the married woman’s eldest son. Of course, a heavy price is attached to their affair, but nothing in the world (social, moral, financial) has the power to stop it from happening. Not long after their first meeting (during a dinner party), the two become passionate lovers and turn their lives (and the lives around them) upside down.
The destination of the first part of the movie, and the point from which the second part departs, is a sequence that begins in rural Italy and ends in the middle of London—it begins with grass, insects, skin, knees, kissing, and fucking, and ends in an office space in Aviva Tower (modernism), which is between the Lloyd’s Building (postmodernism) and St. Mary Axe (globalism). In the office space, the rich Italian family is meeting with a neoliberal Sikh. He wants to buy their textile company and transform it into a global operation. The Sikh goes on and on about the importance of breaking with the past and becoming a member of the new economy. For him, the meaning of human history is the realization of a world market that not only provides everyone with good products but also spiritual satisfaction.
In this amazing sequence, we move from the human biological condition, which is a part of nature (bugs, plants, sunlight), to the human cultural condition, which is more and more integrated by the leading technologies of the new economy. And the movement from the natural to the cultural is beautifully shot. Indeed, the whole movie is a work of beauty. Director Luca Guadagnino has what the world of cinema needs more of: a fearless commitment to the beautiful in all of its forms and locations—faces, bodies, clothes, streets, buildings, interior spaces, foods. I Am Love is a visual masterpiece and one of the most important movies of the decade we recently completed. 
Sounds like Dassin’s gorgeous Phaedra, but I’ll admit I can’t quite imagine the elegant Tilda Swinton fucking.
Tilda Swinton is a hero. Wears Jil Sander throughout.
p.s. Tilda’s in an openly open marriage. Fucking is something I’m sure she knows better than most of us ever will.
@1 you need to watch more of her films.
To me, the movie was very Italian in feel, not the Brit/US feel we get in other Swinton movies. It was more meaningful if you knew that Milan is/was a gritty industrial place and how it is in the small villages and towns in the hills.
More about place and compromise, and her returning to her roots after making herself one version of Italian from her original Russian peasant connection with the earth, sky, and water, accentuated by fire and plants.
Half the people who saw it at SIFF loved it – the others hated it. If you want to see a cool Italian movie about food, family, place, culture, and urban/rural divides, this is amazing. If you want to see Tilda in a US/UK film you really should skip it.
Where is this playing? I don’t see any showtimes.
I loved it until the last 5 minutes. My eardrums were almost blown out by the way-overly-intense music and I thought the ending dumb. Also, BEGIN SPOILER ALERT the young lover was the best friend and business partner of her son, I’m pretty sure he should have been at the funeral and we should have seen him (young lover) and her (Tilda Swinton’s character) interact. END SPOILER ALERT
“one of the most important movies of the decade”?? I enjoyed it (except the last five minutes, see above), but come on! Documentaries much?
@4: It opens at the Seven Gables tomorrow. For some reason those showtimes didn’t load into our system (looking into it!).
Pretentious art-house film. I love Tilda, it’s beautifully shot and acted but it’s basically…a soap opera.
We know virtually nothing about these people except the rich, you know, are different from you and I and there you have it. Oh, and Tilda gets her “awakening” when she finds out a secret about her daughter.
Overscored, ridiculous shots of lovemaking and the flora and fauna (get it? birds and bees, like we’re idiots). And what’s with the huge titles of WHERE WE ARE.
That’s the truth about what happened to a full house at SIFF – you either love it or hate it.
Charles, this doesn’t even belong on a top ten list, no less a decade list.
Can’t wait to see this !
Oh man. I was in the half of the SIFF showing that hated this one.
This is a film that has a sex scene with literal birds and bees footage and locomotive sounds mixed into the overwrought musical score, and a funeral scene with angel headstones crying in the rain. I can’t think of more cliche imagery for these situations, and they don’t feel like new twists on old images- they just feel unimaginative. The son’s secret magically vanishes from everyone’s thoughts the second he’s no longer in the picture, and pretty much any plot element that didn’t directly involve Tilda Swinton was abandoned- which made it feel like an artificial story constructed for her, not a realistic narrative of family.
(Spoilers: I mean, bonus points for the lesbian daughter. I liked how that worked out. It was probably the only original twist on a pretty tired story.)
Chaz didn’t stop to ponder a body part? Where’s the Mudede we’ve come to know and hate?
@9 those were the best parts.
Hell, I’ve seen the woman fucking in a ton of films, The Beach being the most recent. Still can’t picture it, though.