I Am Love, Luca Guadagnino's beautiful and brilliant saga of love, family, and sweet, glorious food -- and the film that was unjustly robbed of Italy's Best Foreign Film Oscar submission -- is now available on DVD. One of the truly remarkable films of the year...you must experience it for yourself.
Check out my review at filmcritic.com.
4 comments:
Tilda Swinton is one of the best actresses alive today. Just the fact that she learned to speak Italian with a Russian accent is Oscar-worthy in and of it's self.
But that movie just didn't do it for me. I loved the intimate moments, the food, the little emotions, but it fell flat with melodramatics and the music was used to fill in emotions rather than accent them. The subtleties were more thrilling than the grandeur that it was trying to exude.
Tilda Swinton is a genius. A true artist. And my favorite actress of the moment...and likely beyond.
Brilliant in I Am Love. And did you happen to see Erick Zonca's Julia? It was the best screen performance by anyone -- bar none -- in 2009, in one of the very best films of 2009. It barely received a theatrical release and had quite a clandestine DVD release as well. But it is out there...find it, all of you!
I wrote a few words about Julia here. And of course, it was prominent on my Best of 2009 list.
As for I Am Love, it is a perfectly appropriate reaction to buck against its grandiosity. You are certainly not alone. And to be honest, much as I loved the whole, you are correct to pinpoint the smaller, intimate moments as the film's best. But the concept of telling a story of love and freedom writ large spoke to me on a very personal level. I understand the negative reactions, but I loved every moment.
I have had "Julia" on my Netflix queue for quite a while. I will have to get it now. Hollywood needs more women like Tilda who may not have the glam but who can really, truly, act.
Julia is another film that is just pure gonzo genius. Its basic conceit -- telling the story of a drunken loser who stumbles into a wide-reaching underground incident and basically lies her way through it on an epic, epic scale -- will either instantly engage or swiftly turn off viewers in a way similar to I Am Love. But it is oh-so-challenging, darkly funny, and always compelling. Plus, Swinton is just extraordinary.
I think I am only one of about 12 people to have ever seen it, and it is one of the great unseen masterpieces.
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