I am Love, easily one of the most sensual films I have ever seen, is ravishing, an operatic melodrama of stunning beauty and luxuriant texture. It is a thing elemental, a piece of art that works as pure, unadulterated hedonism, electrifying the senses with incandescent fire. It is a film out of time, donning the semblance of modernity but hiding beneath those drab garments a musculature evocative of Visconti and classical European dramas of yesteryear.

I am Love opens in an ornate Milanese mansion where the Recchi family has gathered to hear whom the ailing patriarch (Gabriele Ferzetti) intends to anoint as the successor of his longstanding textile business and considerable fortune. In this moment, reminiscent of “King Lear,” we are introduced to Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton, who learned Italian for the role), the compliant and respectful wife of Tancredi (Pippo Delbono), the new head of the family, and mother to a grown son (Flavio Parenti) and daughter (Alba Rohrwacher) trying desperately to divest themselves of their patriarchal, industrialist roots and create fulfilling lives for themselves.

We understand that the business and the family are run with the same well-oiled precision as the looms we glimpse humming in a building nearby. But when Emma begins an affair with one of her son’s friends, a young chef named Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), it will set in motion a series of events that will tragically shatter the proud family and bring it crashing to the ground.

Director Luca Guadagnino has made a labor of love and it shows in each and every frame captured by his swirling, fluid camera. His exquisite attention to detail, luminous cinematography, and ability to meld past and present cinematic sensibilities rewards his brazen and operatic poetry. Guadagnino finds the ideal soulmate in John Adams, whose pre-existing bombastic operas (“Nixon in China,” “Doctor Atomic”) were mined for minimalist and atonal, yet incredibly lush accompaniment. More than any film in recent memory, music is every bit as dynamic a character as the flesh and blood avatars on screen.

It is obvious that Guadagnino has much to say about class. He spends as much time with the help—perpetually scurrying about—as he does with those they serve, their sweat and energy going to power a colossus of which they cannot be a part. Even Antonio is no more than a poor man who knows that the way to anyone’s heart, regardless of wealth, is through their stomach. But modernity is taking its toll and while one generation pursues materialism, another desperately clings to tradition—which generation is affixed to which pursuit might surprise you. Although I am Love is awash in elitist sensibilities (about food, art, etc.), it criticizes (and glamorizes) the lifestyle of ease, strongly suggesting that the idle hands of means are the devil’s playground. Such is certainly the case with the mistress of the house.

Under Guadagnino’s sensual camera, eating is like sex. Antonio’s hands caress both his culinary creations and his lover’s skin with the same intense eroticism. When he and Emma make love in a verdant field, even the insects participate, pollinating the flowers surrounding the writhing bodies. Is this an affair of the heart or something more primal? We are never sure. And though it explodes out of nowhere, the ingredients that led to its combustion were there all along just waiting to be mixed. Emma has had to literally bury her personality at the behest of her neglectful husband. To him, she is little more than a commodity, like the goods lining his warehouse walls. In Antonio’s loins she finds both rebellion and redemption. It takes a cataclysm to free her and allow her to reclaim an identity she was forced to sublimate decades ago. It is not something she planned, nor would ever desire, but it is up to the audience to judge the rightness or wrongness of her actions. The conclusion, an explosive decompression of colliding emotions, blurs the line between culpability and circumstance.

© Copyright 2010 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Flavio Parenti, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Delbono
Rated R for sexuality and nudity.
Running Time: 120 minutes