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I Am Love

Original title: Io sono l'amore
  • 2009
  • R
  • 2h
IMDb RATING
7.0/10
25K
YOUR RATING
Tilda Swinton, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Delbono, and Flavio Parenti in I Am Love (2009)
A tragic love story set at the turn of the millennium in Milan. The film follows the fall of the haute bourgeoisie due to the forces of passion and unconditional love.
Play trailer2:10
3 Videos
99+ Photos
DramaRomance

Emma left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. Now a member of a powerful industrial family, she is the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled. One day, Antonio, a talented ch... Read allEmma left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. Now a member of a powerful industrial family, she is the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled. One day, Antonio, a talented chef and her son's friend, makes her senses kindle.Emma left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. Now a member of a powerful industrial family, she is the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled. One day, Antonio, a talented chef and her son's friend, makes her senses kindle.

  • Director
    • Luca Guadagnino
  • Writers
    • Barbara Alberti
    • Ivan Cotroneo
    • Walter Fasano
  • Stars
    • Tilda Swinton
    • Flavio Parenti
    • Edoardo Gabbriellini
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.0/10
    25K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Luca Guadagnino
    • Writers
      • Barbara Alberti
      • Ivan Cotroneo
      • Walter Fasano
    • Stars
      • Tilda Swinton
      • Flavio Parenti
      • Edoardo Gabbriellini
    • 145User reviews
    • 198Critic reviews
    • 79Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 1 Oscar
      • 16 wins & 47 nominations total

    Videos3

    I Am Love: U.S. Trailer
    Trailer 2:10
    I Am Love: U.S. Trailer
    I Am Love
    Trailer 2:02
    I Am Love
    I Am Love
    Trailer 2:02
    I Am Love
    A Guide to the Films of Luca Guadagnino
    Clip 5:06
    A Guide to the Films of Luca Guadagnino

    Photos126

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    Top cast48

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    Tilda Swinton
    Tilda Swinton
    • Emma Recchi
    Flavio Parenti
    Flavio Parenti
    • Edoardo Recchi Junior
    Edoardo Gabbriellini
    Edoardo Gabbriellini
    • Antonio Biscaglia
    Liliana Flores
    • Liliana Macedo
    Maria Paiato
    Maria Paiato
    • Ida Marangon
    Chiara Tomarelli
    • Anita Toffoli
    Jimmi Carlos Zuniga Macias
    • João Macedo
    Alba Rohrwacher
    Alba Rohrwacher
    • Elisabetta Recchi
    Pippo Delbono
    Pippo Delbono
    • Tancredi Recchi
    Mattia Zaccaro
    • Gianluca Recchi
    Marisa Berenson
    Marisa Berenson
    • Allegra Rori Recchi
    Gabriele Ferzetti
    Gabriele Ferzetti
    • Edoardo Recchi Senior
    Ginevra Notarbartolo
    • Rachele Piermarini
    Piero Castellini
    • Sig. Gratieni
    Claudia Monicelli Bagnarelli
    • Sig.ra Gratieni
    Emanuele Cito Filomarino
    • Gregorio Sanfelice
    Gaia Chaillet Giusti
    • Beatrice Tavecchia
    Pierluigi Colpo
    • Pierluigi Manni
    • Director
      • Luca Guadagnino
    • Writers
      • Barbara Alberti
      • Ivan Cotroneo
      • Walter Fasano
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews145

    7.024.9K
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    Featured reviews

    8ddaveddave

    Passionately captured

    I was lucky enough to catch a preview of this movie last night in London. I could say great deal about the film, but i won't, all i'd like to say is that i thought it was fantastic. The film was extremely captivating and very thought provoking. it is not often that love, passion, desire and the hope for understanding is captured so well on screen. it is a film that you will no doubt find yourself taking the role of one or more of the characters, a reminder of humanity, and the great power of love and one's need to listen to your heart, to take measures. looks good, sounds great and a beautiful punch in all manners.

    8/10
    4mauricecaldera-709-920424

    The froth in your cappuccino

    This is an impeccably designed melodrama in the classic Italian and Hollywood sense. It pays homage to Visconti, Sirk etc. in the same (but different) way that Almodovar pays homage to them (over and over again). But for a film that takes itself utterly seriously, it really has absolutely nothing to say. It glides through its themes and events without the least interest in developing any of them, all the director is interested in is the aesthetic and dramatic effect that they might offer. In fact, it is all effect. The dialogue is quite often stilted, perhaps in the manner that the dialogue can often see stilted in the classic films that he is trying to emulate, but when they're in London (for a meeting in the city...cue the Gherkin...)...the dialogue isn't stilted, it's incomprehensible...

    What he lacks in substance, he makes up for in style, the World of Interiors set design is impeccable, and indeed is the star of the film, as is the wardrobe, all that's missing is the catwalk. But the camera work and editing is incoherent and gratuitous and works against the film at all times. He is using the visual language of an artist video piece to tell the story of lush soap opera...Guadagnino really throws everything he can at the spectator in order to reinvent the genre, but the result is clumsy and often annoying.

    That said, this is at least a brave albeit flawed attempt at film-making, the actors look the part, which is all they're expected to do, and mostly pull off the clumsy dialogue, and there are some genuinely moving moments, if only visually. The music heightens the drama to such a pitch that sometimes you're not sure whether to laugh or explode. What could have been a great film was in the end, an often frustrating but nevertheless intense cinematic experience.
    9JoshuaDysart

    Staggeringly Beautiful...

    I can't describe the power of this film, and I can't stop thinking about it either. There's a negative review on here that says to go see MICHAEL CLAYTON instead and not to waste your time. Well, if a movie about plot, overly drawn characters and artifice, all shot by the book, is what you're looking for, then yes... this probably isn't the movie for you.

    But if you like people more than stories. If you want to see film-making at its most graceful and organic and inventive, if you want a musical score that will turn a sidelong glance into an operatic overture, then this IS the movie for you. It is a baroque masterwork. A cathedral of a film. Cold as stone but inspiring the soul.

    Tilda Swinton is a goddess. She says so little, but communicates so much. There's an entire ocean of emotion inside or her, spilling out of her eyes. I cried twice at this film. Once because of the subject matter and then again at the delicacy of the film-making. Don't let people with conservative tastes and conventional ideas of film and story tell you not to go see this movie. They are robbing you of experiencing pure emotive cinema.
    9susannah-straughan-1

    The bold and the beautiful

    The poster for Luca Guadagnino's film shows a regal Tilda Swinton in an eye-catching red dress surrounded by her sober-looking family. In another version, the frock has undergone a cheeky digital makeover to a shocking pink that matches the movie's bold, declaratory title. The symbolism might seem a little obvious, but this is a story in which one woman's passion comes bursting to the surface – with tragic consequences.

    "Something part palace, part prison, part museum" is how star and producer Swinton envisaged the house at the centre of this contemporary drama about the Recchis, a wealthy Milanese family. Opening with a series of almost monochrome shots of a snowbound Milan, Guadagnino closes in on the elegant but forbidding 1930s mansion, where Russian-born Emma (Swinton) and her husband Tancredi (Pippo Delbono) are preparing to host a dinner party.

    On the surface, Emma is an attractive middle-aged woman, perfectly at ease with her three grown-up children and comfortable within the sumptuous trappings of Italian society. Guadagnino and cinematographer Yorick Le Saux linger over the chandeliers, wall hangings and gleaming napery that indicate decades of affluent living. But as the white-gloved lackeys hover over the birthday celebrations of ageing patriarch Edoardo, we sense that something – or someone – is about to shatter the family's much-prized unity.

    Soon there is an announcement about the future of the family textile business, but it isn't the defining event of this opening set piece. Guadagnino's interest lies not in soap opera-style financial wrangling, but in how two of Emma's children unwittingly lead her towards a personal epiphany. First her daughter Betta (Alba Rohrwacher), a talented artist, causes a minor ripple by declaring that she's now more interested in pursuing photography. Emma's subsequent discovery of a heartfelt note inside a CD box reveals that Betta has fallen deeply in love – with a girl.

    During the meal, a young man turns up looking for Emma's son Edo (Flavio Parenti). He awkwardly refuses to join the party, but it's clear that Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini) a handsome and supremely talented chef, has struck a chord with the lady of the house. So, as Edo eagerly makes plans to open a restaurant with his friend, Emma is drawn into a high-risk affair.

    The power of Swinton's performance lies not in her mastery of Italian dialogue but in her gradual, unspoken surrender to passion, over the dictates of convention. This is a film in which speeches are, for the most part, far less important than the sense of underlying tension generated by John Adams's operatic score and Le Saux's restless camera work. Late in the film there's a sinuous tracking shot that follows Emma's impulsive descent to the basement kitchen for a stolen moment with her lover.

    Guadagnino's willingness to take risks in the pursuit of what Swinton has called "pure cinema" is what distinguishes this film from other stories of forbidden love involving ladies who are old enough to know better. Epicureans will experience as frisson as Emma is seduced by Antonio's lovingly prepared prawn dish. The lingering shots of those seductive crustaceans could have been ridiculous, but they're another small and believable step in Emma's awakening to the possibility of a new love. When the action moves to the glorious countryside around San Remo, Emma allows Antonio to cut her hair, in an apparent nod to her daughter's recent change of style. Her rebellion reaches a crescendo in the extraordinary al fresco sex scene, shot in huge close ups to the accompaniment of teeming insect life that threatens to drown out everything else.

    Guadagnino and Swinton first worked together on The Protagonists (1999) and this latest collaboration evolved over a period of nearly 11 years. It's too early to say whether they can be measured against some of their inspirations –Tolstoy, Flaubert , Hitchcock and Visconti – but there is much to admire in this stylish and well-acted drama.

    There are faults: some of the camera placements are too artily self-conscious and Emma's interactions with her husband and children often feel rather perfunctory. Unlike Visconti's The Leopard, this isn't an in-depth exploration of family dynamics buckling under the forces of history. But neither the director nor the star can be accused of timidity in the way they embrace the protagonist's headlong rush towards her destiny. And even the Master of Suspense would have applauded the shocking climax of a confrontation in the garden, which made me jump out of my seat.
    8willandthomas-picturehou

    Bold and Shameless In The Best Possible Way

    I was amused and entertained. Taken, very taken by how seriously it takes itself but I don't mean that in an patronizing way. For those people the subject treated is of paramount importance. The past and the future mingling in a world where profit commands. The young son, a stunning, Flavio Parenti, is the one attached to the old traditions. A rich capitalist with a socialist sensibility. Tilda Swinton runs the gamut of emotions and she does it beautifully. Details are terribly important here and, I must confess, I thought of Visconti, specially because Violante Visconte di Modrone is part of the cast. Who is Mr Guadagnino, the director? Where does he come from? He seems incredibly sure of himself. Costumes, interiors, landscapes are a visual feast. The score is also a very bold touch. Marisa Berenson (Barry Lyndon) and Gabriele Ferzzetti (L'Avventura) are added pleasures to this unexpected, if sometimes irritating, treat.

    Director's Trademarks: The Films of Luca Guadagnino

    Director's Trademarks: The Films of Luca Guadagnino

    Suspiria director Luca Guadagnino takes IMDb through his approach to filmmaking, from longtime collaborator Tilda Swinton, to why he hopes he doesn't have a "style."
    Watch our guide to Luca's films
    Editorial Image
    5:06

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Lead actress Tilda Swinton learned both Italian and Russian for the part, neither of which she spoke before filming.
    • Goofs
      When Edoardo and Elisabetta meet in London, there's a lot of shadow on the pavement. When they walk away together in the next shot, there's a lot more sun. But the weather can change quickly in the UK.
    • Quotes

      Elisabetta Recchi: Happy is a word that makes one sad.

    • Connections
      Featured in At the Movies: Venice Film Festival 2009 (2009)
    • Soundtracks
      The Chairman Dances
      Composed by John Adams

      Performed by Orchestra of St. Luke's

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    FAQ19

    • How long is I Am Love?Powered by Alexa

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • July 23, 2010 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • Italy
    • Official sites
      • Official Facebook
      • Official site
    • Languages
      • Italian
      • Russian
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Yo soy el amor
    • Filming locations
      • Villa Necchi Campiglio, Milan, Lombardia, Italy(Recchis' villa)
    • Production companies
      • First Sun
      • Mikado Film
      • Rai Cinema
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • €3,600,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $5,005,465
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $121,504
      • Jun 20, 2010
    • Gross worldwide
      • $12,747,768
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      2 hours
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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