Reviews & Ratings for
I Am What I Am More at IMDbPro »Col cuore in gola (original title)

10 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
nice giallo, 5 January 2002
Author: mariorakocevic (mario.rakocevic@magnet.at) from europe

A rather unusual agenda from tinto brass who obviously found later his niche in "t&a" movies. Col cuore in Gola is a psychedelic, pop art giallo that can just come from the great era of the late 60´s/70´s. Starting from the nice credits and music you immediately like this film and this is just the beginning! Trintignant founds in a nightclub a corpse beside the lovely aulin who just says "i wasnt it" Convinced that she is innocent he wants to help her and want to find out the murderer, Aulins brother should solve this case and both are searching for him. Though not quite without problems..a dwarf in raincoat is following them in companion with some gangsters who kidnap Aulin. Jean is now searching for aulin, aulins brother and (of course) the murderer. The Story itself is not that convincing (rather unimportant) but what here is really of interest is the unconvential style of brass : splitscreen(even tripple split screens!) some scenes in black and dark yellow filter and more.., and in the "middle" of course the presence of two very convincing leads: cool Trintignant and hot Ewa Aulin. (somehow priceless here in white fishnet stockings) the result is a quite good giallo with (obviously) strong references to pop art. In the same year Aulin and Trintignant appeared in the avantgarde giallo masterpiece "Death laid an egg", Col Cuore in Gola is not great as Giulio Questis film but is definitely entertaining.

7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Deadly Sweet...., 20 July 2008

Author: dianevallere from Hollywood, CA

Just saw this tonight uncut on the big screen here in Hollywood. Visually very nice. But not really a giallo, I don't know why people keep calling it that. There is a murder which basically occurs off-screen and has almost nothing to do with the "story." Virtually no violence, some eyebrow-raising sex, obviously inspired by Antonioni, et al. Little story, lots of avant garde/graphic style, references to Pop-Art/Lichtenstein, comics, "Blow-Up" and other movies/the Viet Nam War/other issues of the day. Nice visuals/editing/soundtrack (which was remarkably clear in the print I just saw, supposedly soon to be out on DVD). At times notably innovative and fresh. A bit of a surprise ending. Wandering narrative, quick cuts, lots of color and gritty flair. Swinging London backdrop. In b/w and color.

2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
AKA ... Deadly Sweet, 25 February 2011

Author: nuclear_division from Melbourne, Australia

This film is very stylized, liked a lot of the editing effects, the split images in-particular, also how it cuts to war images of Vietnam and changes to black and white in parts. The sets, costumes/wardrobe are elaborate and detailed, the lighting is very good also. Interesting to see London in the 60's, notice how the trains are still powered by steam in the scene behind the graveyard. The casting is quite strong especially Jean-Louis Trintignant who plays the lead role, he is supported by the beautiful Ewa Aulin, the cast of nefarious mob type figures is also a standout. The storyline although a little weak leaves you guessing until the end. It is quite enjoyable overall, but seems a little experimental and doesn't really mesh, but I liked the fact it had a sad ending.

1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Inexpensive and dated mystery., 2 July 2010

Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico, USA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Well, Eva Aulin is certainly delicious and Jean-Louis Trintignant is sympatico as is usually the case, but the film in its entirety suffers from a poor script and from the director's misguided whimsy.

Trintignant visits his partner's office, up the stairs from a dance hall, and discovers Aulin standing over the body, holding a gun, saying she didn't do it. Trintignant takes a second look at seventeen-year-old, blond, robustly figured, ex-Swedish-beauty-contest-winner Eva Aulin and quickly decides, "Right, she couldn't have done it." He runs off with her to search out the REAL killers, and we are treated to a tour of swinging London's most-visited sights. Here's Picadilly Circus. See all the skin shops? And, look -- here's a poster of The Beatles! There's also a kind of zoo. There are small shots of one of Trintignant's eyes. It gets confusing. I think they copulate on top of Nelson's Column but I'm not sure. I AM sure they copulate in Trintignant's apartment in a scene that is all apricot and rose and consists of unidentified hands caressing unidentified body parts. I guess Brass forgot to include the softly billowing crimson drapes and the lighted candles. When somebody hits someone else over the head, there are Pop inserts of the sounds, as in the old Batman TV series -- POW! and ZLONK!

I've only seen three or four of Tinto Brass's movie but I'm already able to discern a kind of stylistic arc through the murk. In this film, the earliest of his that I've seen, he appears to be doing everything possible to draw attention to himself as the director. (The screen splits into three separate scenes at one point.) And the relentless use of pop imagery is symptomatic. Hey, look! Mamma mia, I'm inna movies!

In a somewhat later film, I think called "L'Uolo," about a handful of people in a surrealistic hotel, the narrative is thrown out completely and we get one bizarre image after another -- no longer just pop, but a kaleidoscopic non sequitur that carries no weight at all after the first few shocking minutes.

Finally, Brass found his metier, in the no-man's land between soft-core and hard-core porn. The stories in this later genre aren't original. Usually a bourgeois wife is bored with her marriage and finds a lover who introduces her to, well, a different kind of love. It wasn't original with "Emanuelle" either, or "Lady Chatterly's Lover," for that matter. I'd guess that the theme was first introduced to a public audience somewhere back in time, past Aristophanes, into the Masques.

Of the three phases of Tinto Brass's career, I prefer the last one, the one with the prosthetic penises. At least there, the director seems to have found a comfortable and satisfying niche.

The Italian title, "Col Cuore in Gola," means "With Heart in Throat," but the English title is as much a puzzle as the movie itself. "I Am What I Am." Is it from Yahweh or Popeye? I've been told this is a "cult movie." I wonder what a cult movie is.

1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Average Giallo from a T&A man., 28 August 2009

Author: lastliberal from United States

When I see Tinto Brass, I think of Cheeky and Salon Kitty. T&A features, not traditional giallo. I am willing to be surprised.

You are going to be reminded by a current jail occupant in Orlando, Fl, who was dancing the night away after her daughter went missing. The children. Jane (Ewa Aulin) and Jerome (Charles Kohler) Burroughs, in this film are in a nightclub right after they visit their father in the morgue. Guess death can't interfere with life.

Bernard (Jean-Louis Trintignant) discovers her with his dead partner and takes her away.

They go looking for the killer. It's not as bloody as most giallo, and there is no nudity to speak of, but it is worth watching. It had an almost comic book air at times, and the music was definitely upbeat.

The cinematography was outstanding on this print and really made it worthwhile.

1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Not a great film, but worth seeing, 17 April 2009
Author: lazarillo from Denver, Colorado and Santiago, Chile

This pop psychedelic giallo is an early film by the Italian "master of eroticism" (he's definitely "master" of something), Tinto Brass. Unfortunately, it's VERY derivative of Michaelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-up" from the previous year, and while some find that movie borderline pretentious, this movie is well over the borderline. It also compares pretty unfavorably to the OTHER pop psychedelic giallo released in 1967, "Death Laid an Egg", which also features French actor Jean Trintigant and Swedish nymphet Ewe Aulin. But just because it isn't as good as two excellent movies like "Blow-up" and "Death Laid an Egg" doesn't necessarily make it bad. It's well filmed, and it has good acting and good music. I actually liked it better than "Salon Kitty", "Caligula" or any of Brass' other later, more erotic, but much more tedious ventures.

The story is pretty insubstantial. A man spots a a young girl at a disco and is immediately drawn to her. Later he finds the disco owner dead and the young woman standing over his body. Since the disco owner was apparently blackmailing her recently deceased father, the girl suspects that the killer might be a member of her own oddball family--her androgynous twin brother, her grasping mother, or her sinister gangster stepfather. As the couple are chased all over Swinging late 60's London by all kinds of colorful characters, including a hulking black man and a dwarf, they try to piece together the bizarro plot (while the viewers try even less successfully to do the same thing). Brass also throws in a lot of black and white footage--perhaps in an homage to American film noir--however, this style really clashes with the colorful psychedelic pop art and the principal story, which far from being downbeat and noirish, is often as light and airy as a soufflé.

Trintigant was one of the most famous French actors of the period. He was kind of in the same mold as Jean-Paul Belomondo, Jean Sorel, and Alain Delon. But he didn't seem to rely as much on his good looks as some of his fellow French leading men, and he was often in more interesting, offbeat films like Robbe-Grillet's "TransEuropean Express", "The Angry Sheep", and, of course, "Death Laid an Egg". Ewe Aulin, who was only seventeen at the time, did this film as part of a 1967 trifecta which also included "Death Laid an Egg" and the big-budget celebrity-train-wreck sex comedy "Candy". Only one of these was really a good movie, but SHE is definitely very memorable in all three of them. If nothing else, this is certainly a prime example of a European co-production of the era--an Italian film shot in London with a French leading man and a Swedish leading lady.

This is by no means a great film, but it is worth seeing.

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