I Am Love

The com­mon themes that under­score I Am Love may well be woven tight­ly into the tapes­try of Ital­ian cin­e­ma, but through a sequence of rev­e­la­tions and self-real­i­sa­tions, the Rec­chi family’s unrav­el­ling sig­ni­fies rev­o­lu­tion. In the midst of exec­u­tive tran­si­tion, the family’s exis­ten­tial cri­sis is as promi­nent as the Rec­chi name itself. It is a cri­sis that you sense has been build­ing for some time, but has been sup­pressed by an old guard whose slack­ened grip is now allow­ing cracks to show.

Heir appar­ent to the Rec­chi empire is youngest son and black sheep Edoar­do (Flavio Par­en­ti), who is unwit­ting­ly thrust to the fore­front of the fam­i­ly busi­ness ahead of his seem­ing­ly bet­ter suit­ed sib­lings. Pre­vi­ous­ly inhib­it­ed by his mother’s safe­guard­ing, it is Edoardo’s sud­den mat­u­ra­tion that takes on a cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ty, as Emma Rec­chi (Til­da Swin­ton) is left to con­sid­er how moth­er­hood has hol­lowed out her marriage.

Inspired by the shock dis­cov­ery of her daughter’s les­bian­ism, Emma turns her atten­tions to her own well­be­ing. Aban­don­ing the prin­ci­ples she has so care­ful­ly instilled in her chil­dren, she allows her mind to fix on an unfa­mil­iar desire, which is unearthed when Anto­nio (Edoar­do Gab­brielli­ni), a friend of Edoardo’s, enters the fray.

In the neigh­bour­ing Alpine foothills, Anto­nio occu­pies a mod­est home­stead; a rus­tic space away from the dai­ly grind of city life where he is free to hone his culi­nary skills in unspoilt tran­quil­li­ty. After sam­pling a taste of his sali­vat­ing hand­i­work, Emma finds her­self emo­tion­al­ly drawn towards Antonio.

She is com­plete­ly and hope­less­ly seduced. Speed­ing down the path towards self-dis­cov­ery, she starts to remem­ber love, not as it has become to her, but what it once was. Her infat­u­a­tion soon swells beyond obses­sion as they both yield to temptation.

Food is the lan­guage of love here, and as such those with a pruri­ent dis­po­si­tion are like­ly to be left unful­filled. Indeed, the first sex­u­al encounter between Emma and Anto­nio is not phys­i­cal, but rather metaphor­i­cal, man­i­fest­ing in oral ecsta­sy as Emma par­tic­i­pates in fore­play with a piece of cutlery.

What is so engag­ing is not just the way we are encour­aged to respond to such exchanges, but how we are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly forced to absorb the entire aes­thet­ic of the film. With a yearn­ing, lin­ger­ing gaze, I Am Love soaks in its sur­round­ings with a voyeuris­tic eye, por­ing over obscured Milanese back­streets and the impos­si­ble Lom­bar­dian vis­tas that lay beyond the great city.

Chal­leng­ing the rhetoric of Ital­ian cin­e­ma, patri­ar­chal oppres­sion is under­mined by a new­ly empow­ered Mrs Rec­chi, whose adul­ter­ous actions may not make her a role mod­el, but are con­tex­tu­al­ly jus­ti­fied nonethe­less. In a film of vil­lains, Emma is an anti-hero­ine; no bet­ter, per­haps mere­ly braver, than the rest of the family.

Revert­ing the neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions that have become affixed with the­atri­cal cin­e­ma, I Am Love is a recla­ma­tion of the melo­dra­ma; its com­posed nar­ra­tive spiked with fits of pas­sion, lust and greed. Paced to John Adams’ stir­ring score, the action builds steadi­ly before cli­max­ing in a fierce crescen­do, as Emma’s self-inflict­ed ulti­ma­tum plays out in a fren­zied, oper­at­ic solo.