Ariel Pink: Before Today

http://www.myspace.com/arielpink

Ryan Mcginley

http://www.ryanmcginley.com

Review: I am Love

Pretty vacant
New director, Luca Guadagnino’s latest film ‘I am Love’ is like a beautiful, gleaming ship but with no engine or passengers inside it. The story is of a beautiful, wealthy matron of a rich Milanese family played by Tilda Swinton. She is good host to illustrious dinner parties, and an understanding mother to her various children. She then hesitantly has an affair with a prodigal young Italian chef, a friend of her son’s. Although the film has a crafted and expertly measured pace, Tilda Swinton’s otherworldly performance in ‘I am Love’ is the only light in a fairly flimsy story filled with thinly written characters. For instance, the chef simply woos over Swinton by over supplying her with his good cooking and a continual emphasis that he grows his own herbs and vegetables in the mountains above Milan. This is shown as if it’s a significant and alluring attribute. The frantic drama that normally that ignites this kind of Madame Bovary story, feels strangely detached and left out in this film. Before any real drama begins to grow, the is a sudden tragedy plonked into the story that feels like the source of a dead end for the scriptwriters than anything of dramatic importance. In this way the film is very reminiscent of the last Pedro Almadovar film, ‘Broken Embraces’. The movie is beautiful to look at. There are beautiful clothes, food and buildings. But all the films visual’s and arresting operatic flourishes, really tries to hide a film that is at its heart, fairly hollow. Aside to this there are some elements of the film that are potentially fascinating. The early scenes of the family dinner party, in their restrained pace have a fascinating insight into the patriarchy of an Italian upper class family. Swinton’s character’s Russian past, and marriage to her earnest husband are also particularly intriguing but underdeveloped. Overall this film bound by a performance and aesthetic style that is enjoyable and pleasing to the eye, but ultimately gives the impression that this new director has bitten more than he can chew storywise.