Review of I Am Love (2010) by Sergio B — 06 Oct 2010

It's good! it's different. every frame is a feast, with amazing camera work and light. In a chase on foot scene, the drama and tension climax is rendered through filming the light coming through the glass panels of a shop window, blinding and beautiful, and it works.

the story goes kind of crazy at the end, but the movie seems to be more about such beautiful frames. it tells the story of the fall of an industrial dynasty and of its disruption by means of love. The director manages to convey the complex relationships of the people involved, family, outsiders, servants, using little dialogue but making masterful use of movement, frames, close ups, focus, color.

The food and the clothes and the gifts all serve the telling of this story. One sees why many critics mention Visconti, when the director tells us so much just by the way he places actors in a frame or by how he makes them move in a room.

Spaces are often filmed empty, too. It also made me think of teorema by Pasolini, in a way, especially the miraculous end. Tilda Swinton is quite amazing.