TRlNITY
This movie is so great. I'll skip everything you've already read about the cinematography and the acting - all so well done. It really felt like a book on screen not a movie. ie much more depth than you usually get. More subtleties.The only thing I didn't like was how they make the main character "heroic" (via the music). While she is so beautiful on the outside - she's so ugly on the inside; letting her son die to keep her selfish secret safe. She treats her husband poorly when he's done nothing but love and provide for her. Yet the movie portrays her as this bird trying to get air.... I dunno. A little more like a selfish beauty who is actually monstrous - complete with teeth and talons ripping her family apart to get what she fancies.... this year. You do get the impression she'll want something else in a few yrs and she'll rip her "new stable life" apart when she does. That twisted morality aside... :-) this movie is worth every minute. I did not find anything distracting about the camera angles or the music. Every part of it had purpose. And a lot of the images, in my view, were symbolic.
upnworld.com
Few countries make, nay, have the style statement that Italy embodies. A tourism paradise with scores of stunning locales inland and by the sea, magnificent old-world architecture, cool couture, luscious cuisine, luxury furniture and more... "I Am Love" by Luca Guadagnino is that rare achievement unites almost all these elite elements into an impossibly beautiful masterpiece.It focuses on a very wealthy family in Milan that has woven its riches from the textile industry. There is emotional turbulence in the very first sequence - a lost horse race which the family always previously won, and a surprise decision in a declaration of power transfer from one generation to another. The subversive influences, in an impressive array of forms, never stop from there onwards , taking apart the family in multiple ways. This exact same story could have been told by a lesser director in a fairly pedestrian way, but the story-teller here uses the high-end setting as a launching board, to wed everyday behaviour and feeling with an agile tendency to naturally sculpt and let soar scenes of hypnotic intensity and operatic grandeur. Guadagnino directs with such beauty and controlled flamboyance that even if I were charged not the usual $20 that is the price of a movie ticket but $400 that is the tariff for a high-profile opera (that 'I Am Love' effortlessly often simulates) I'd have left satiated at the end of the performance. Guadagnino aces the score on two invaluable fronts. He selects and inserts John Adams' orchestral compositions which were already cemented much before the film's idea was conceived, and five-star cinematography by Yorick Le Saux. Their dual magic, further elevated by the director's visionary wand, manifests in various showpiece sequences.When Emma, her glamorous, augustly catty mother-in-law Allegra and Edoardo's fiancée lunch in Antonio's restaurant, he sends out the best of his modernist cuisine flourishes for them. The way he synthesizes a gorgeous deconstructionist version of the 'Leghorn style Cod' is a joy to watch in itself. On tasting it, Emma gets the first frisson on what's to come. There's even a sneaky meaning in the main course for the senior lady (an egg yolk and pea cream dish that a man would probably scoff in one bite), a relatively mainstream "mixed fish and crunchy vegetable" for the pleasantly full-bodied fiancée. To Emma however, his presentation elides quantity (of which Emma has had no dearth of in her millionaire household) and focuses on profound pleasurable quality (which she may not have had enough of). Shrimp, of those intensely hued small Mediterranean ilk, and ratatouille (stewed vegetables) are placed in front of Emma. Her fingers holding the fork and knife attend to the task with gentle incredulous pleasure and on tasting the shrimp, her eyes close and her face and eyes slowly writhe... as though she's being caressed both inside and outside. The scene's natural pace slows down to join her in languorous ecstasy. Lights dim off elsewhere and create a soft spotlight around her whilst music carefully enhances intimacy and expansiveness in the background. Brad Bird would have approved. The scene is a key example of how cuisine (with a subtle consistent focus on seafood) is used throughout the movie as a device of subversion. After such a seduction, one wonders what the impossibly sated Emma can possibly do to fend off the flirtation... Perhaps the most bravura and executively challenging of the sequences, ensues as a pair of lovers, who couldn't sustain their togetherness on the plains, journey to sun-kissed hills where their love-making is illustrated with the eye of a top artist. John Adam's agile orchestra and panting violins are expertly calibrated to highlight the throes of bare lovers as they carnally celebrate. Imaging, in an inspired move, cuts between scenes of nature and the rapture of their bodies. Making love, has rarely if ever been touched upon with such a unreservedly intense yet deeply artistic vision.As the epicenter of this movie's flux, Emma as portrayed by Tilda Swinton is a landmark example of atypical casting. In a superbly understated performance , there is vulnerability, a genuinely tender heart and innate grace in her layered portrayal. As the middle-aged mistress of the house who was transplanted decades ago to this very rich family, Emma remains polite, sincere and down-to-earth, gaining trust and acceptance of its insiders. The opening sequence is a splendid summation of her temperament. Though she is the queen of the mansion, she calmly and keenly attends to the planning of the momentous family dinner thus showing her commitment to the nitty gritties. At the dinner when her father-in-law (who is fond of her) makes a good natured jab at his grand-son,she looks at her ward with a special blended expression of amusement and sympathy that does not go overboard. To mollify her daughter for whom the rest of the family also claps in sympathetic encouragement, she holds and kisses her and then with delicacy and feeling utters some words inaudible to us, in a fashion uncannily similar to how the "royals" make seemingly involved small-talk with the ballboys-'n'-girls in Wimbledon pre-match ceremonies. Towards the end when grieving Emma, her formal gown unchanged, slumps into bed in a small spartan room set away from the rest of the grand house, and Ida wakes her up next morning with a gentle 'You have to get up' and Emma slowly awakens with a beleaguered face, throughout this ordeal there is never any forceful sorrow displayed yet it is easy to sense the deep ache in her bones and soul.Technically, the film proudly establishes entry into the international textbook of how to make a film. And on a personal level, lo Sono L'Amore will last as an elegant anatomic detailing of that invisible weapon of mass destruction called love. More such @ Upnworld
jootrue
This is a story about the tug of war between those that hold onto tradition and those who crave to be progressive. It is also a study of class and gender, and the irrepressible love which bleeds through and blurs the boundaries. This is a movie of few words, the story of which is told through fleeting glances, a blank stare, and the dizzying sequences of close-ups that mimic the movement of one's own eyes searching desperately for the one face it craves to see. It was the remarkable cinematography of Yorick Le Saux. The score by John Adams was also memorable, often perfectly complementing the protagonists' blissful free fall from grace, the tempo matching with the ever increasing heart rate of the viewer. It was a jaw-dropping experience.
