A mediocre melodrama with a great performance at its center, I Am Love is often torpid, sometimes laughable, and occasionally deeply moving. Writer-director Luca Guadagnino seems to be going for a Visconti-style epic with historical resonance. The Milano manufacturing family that’s choking the life out of our heroine, Emma (Tilda Swinton), exemplifies the ambitious bourgeoisie who took economic control of Italy from the bluebloods in the late 19th and early 20th century. Emma’s husband is even named Tancredi, presumably after the up-and-coming young officer in Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, which chronicled the end of the road for an old-school southern Italian aristocrat. The director also tries for Visconti-style political context, inserting a subplot about the family-owned company being streamlined and sold, becoming part of the global economy and passing references to how the Recchis acquired their wealth (through exploiting workers, fueling the Axis war machine during WWII, and making shady deals with local, possibly Mafioso, leaders). But resurrecting the old master’s ghost only makes I Am Love feel that much more hackneyed.
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This article was originally published on The House Next Door.
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