Review of I Am Love (2010) by Beth A — 28 Feb 2011

On the surface, I Am Love has a strikingly similar plotline to The Private Lives of Pippa Lee - a middle aged woman has a midlife crisis, falls for a younger man, and faces tragedy in a counterintuitive fashion - but the two films could not be more different in execution, style, and effect.

I Am Love is like a modern Visconti melodrama, with touches of Douglas Sirk and 70s Bertolucci - a big film with lush interiors, perfect art direction and costuming, and a bold score. Tilda Swinton plays a somewhat simple minded woman who's spent her life managing the household of her rich family (as per Pippa Lee), but amidst personal familial revelations, starts to find her own life for the very first time.

Tilda Swinton is an actor for whom there is no peer currently in cinema. There are really no words to aptly describe how amazing this actor is, especially in this role. She breathes life and raw emotion into what could have been a very cold, mannered film.

The film itself and the screenplay do have their issues, in particular certain gaps in plot and character, but overall, this is a very affecting film, a film made "just like they used to.".