In terms of directors working right now, Luca Guadagnino is far and away my favourite. His films are often challenging and boundary-pushing, but crucially all are totally unlike one another. Put Suspiria and Challengers side by side and you’d be hard-pressed to pin them down to the same filmmaker, which is what makes him so special. It’s also why the digital re-release of his 2009 romantic drama I Am Love is essential viewing to chart how Guadagnino became the director he is today.
Released digitally in the United Kingdom for the first time, I Am Love stars frequent Guadagnino collaborator Tilda Swinton as Emma, a Russian woman who moved to Italy to marry the manufacturing heir Tancredi Recchi, played by Pippo Delbono. Stuck in a Succession-style family of aspirations, an ageing patriarch, and multiple suitors vying for his place atop the family business, Emma’s is a loveless and distant life. As she grows suspicious of her son Edoardo’s relationship with a local cook named Antonio, however, the family dynamic soon becomes a lot more complicated.
I Am Love starts with a lavish dinner scene, not dissimilar to the wedding parties in The Godfather or The Deer Hunter. It’s the ideal way to introduce the Recchi family, because there are so many moving parts and players to keep track of that the film simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to do it any other way. Initially, you’ll expect it to take a different route: we meet Edoardo’s new girlfriend Eva, an outsider in many ways, and expect the film to chart her acclimation into the family sphere. Guadagnino is spinning so many plates, however, that this is just a decoy to hide the deeper undercurrents broiling beneath.
For this reason, I Am Love is a film best watched blind, knowing as little as possible. Those familiar with the director’s other work will expect a Call Me by Your Name style of hidden romance – with the two films sharing a lot of visual DNA – but it subverts that entirely. Instead, the drama zeroes in on Swinton’s search for affection in an otherwise emotionally vacuous life, to both heartbreaking and damning effect. Swinton is quietly sensational in bringing this to life, capturing unspoken reluctance as well as a yearning for something she simply can’t resist.
More than anything, however, I Am Love is an interesting litmus test to see how Guadagnino has developed as a filmmaker in the 16 years since its release. Some of his key themes are here – repressed homosexuality, lavish summer vistas, and socially frowned-upon love – but told with more rawness than his later films. He’s certainly become a more expressive and robust filmmaker since I Am Love, but the genesis of his identity is clearly here, and it’s fascinating to see him work with a tighter budget, less starry names, and just his own flair to evoke a reaction.
And evocative it is, because I Am Love very nicely flits between hapless romance to family drama by way of sudden bleakness with ease. The final 25 minutes are particularly striking and executed in such a bold, realistic, and nihilistic manner that imbues the previous 90 minutes with a sweeping sense of moral blurriness. Nothing in the film is clear-cut: nobody is wholly good, everybody is selfish in some way, and they’re all hiding something from one another and us as viewers. It’s certainly a film that will flourish upon repeat viewing.
While I Am Love may not be Luca Guadagnino’s most flashy film, nor his most visually striking or generically transformative, it’s certainly one of his most important. Here, you can see him toying with the narrative techniques and core themes that have become synonymous with his best work. It feels like Succession before Succession, and Parasite before Parasite, in some ways. Its smaller scale and more understated storytelling may deter those who prefer his bouncier work, but I Am Love is 16-year-old proof of Guadagnino’s singular, stellar directorial oeuvre.
★★★½
I Am Love will be available on Digital Download from April 14, 2025. You can purchase it here.
This site contains product affiliate links. We may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links.
thatfilmbloguk 