Feasting on forbidden love

Hungry for a lushly crafted drama that blends themes of love, family, and societal change into its recipe? I Am Love (Io sono l'amore), directed by Luca Guadagnino and released in 2009, is your entrée of choice. Intended as the first in a trilogy, the film portrays the shifting traditions of a wealthy Italian family through the perspective of Emma Recchi, a Russian immigrant who has married into their world. With Tilda Swinton in the lead role, Guadagnino weaves a story that contrasts passion with obligation, set against the backdrop of a transforming Italy. Emma’s life as a dutiful wife and mother, suffering a stifled existence within an aristocratic family, is irrevocably changed after beginning a passionate affair with Antonio, her son’s friend and a talented chef. Their deepening amore disrupts the family’s carefully maintained facade, leading to tension and tragedy.

Click here to listen to our CineVerse group’s discussion of I Am Love, conducted last week.

Praised for its elegant visual aesthetic inspired by classic European cinema and Swinton’s immersive performance, I Am Love stands as a powerful exploration of freedom and self-discovery. This is a film focused on a cinematic evocation of the baroque style, often favoring dramatic visual and audio flourishes, a consistently moving camera with surprising camera movements, unconventional framing, and grandiloquent music to nonverbally tell its story and convey the emotional experience of its main character, Emma.

These directorial choices can be interpreted by some as overly arty, excessively melodramatic, and even pretentious by some viewers, while others can admire the emphasis on aesthetics and powerfully contrasting imagery (such as the naked bodies juxtaposed with insect imagery, or shots of the opulent Recchi family estate contrast preceded by dark exterior visuals) to suggest the emotional experience of Emma and other characters.

Per Deep Focus Review writer Brian Eggert: “(I Am Love is) a film ‘about’ embracing now unfashionable approaches to cinema established by great European filmmakers of yesteryear. Luca Guadagnino’s film values aesthetics as much as it dwells in the plight of its protagonist. The operatic production expects its audience to respond to theatrics, bright colors, lush details, and the swelling score by John Adams. The film wants to immerse the audience through the story, of course, but more so through the visual and auditory language of the entire mise-en-scène. It demands an audience that desires sumptuousness in their cinema, complete with bravado camerawork and meaningful, metaphoric passages to dissect…there’s a particular joy attached to this kind of filmmaking that harkens back to an era where Europe’s directors explored expressiveness and richness as a style. There’s a definite pleasure in high melodrama, the type of Visconti and Douglas Sirk, that doesn’t exist in films today.”

The film is comprised of two main sections: The first half is concerned with establishing the characters and the family dynamics, with Emma remaining in her assumed secondary role within the Recchi clan, and the second half centered on her sexual awakening and liberation from that established identity.

Yet again Tilda Swinton excels in another demanding role here, one that required her to learn how to speak Italian but with a Russian accent and engage in an extended nude scene that would have made other actresses blanch. Her performance seems effortless, organic, and utterly honest, and the subtlety with which she inhabits the nearly catatonic Emma, experiencing unimaginable guilt after the accidental death of her son, is particularly impressive.

I Am Love can certainly inspire as a tale of self-awakening and following your truth. Something stirs in Emma after ingesting Antonio’s culinary creation, and soon she is driven to pursue the younger man and covertly indulge in a physically passionate romance that rouses feelings in her she either has long buried or never knew existed. The film delves into the tension between free will, self-discovery, and the pursuit of personal happiness, contrasting these themes with the pressures of conforming to societal norms and fulfilling the expectations imposed by others.

The film also plays up "out with the old, in with the new" ideas. I Am Love is concerned with conjuring the contrasts between the Old World and New World, between longstanding family practices dominated by patriarchs and liberated females who dare to buck those traditions. Consider that Tancredi has sold his father’s beloved business, thereby thwarting the founder’s inheritance wishes, and Edo has died, severing a key male bloodline descendant of the Recchi family. Ponder, too, how Emma has chosen a much younger man from a lower socioeconomic class. At its core, the story examines the complexities of family dynamics, the weight of legacy, and the lessons—both implicit and explicit—passed down across generations. It reflects on the rewards and the profound consequences of acting on instinct or impulse, emphasizing the fragile balance between choice and fate. Through its characters, the film also underscores the inherent unpredictability of human behavior, revealing how deeply we are shaped by both our emotions and the world around us.

A further thematic underpinning at work? The notion of breaking from tradition. Emma has been expected to play the dutiful wife, but she’ll always be an outsider in this Italian family that favors long-established conventions and customs. Her choice to confess her love for Antonio to her husband and walk out on the family by the conclusion demonstrates courage and a stark deviation from expectations that surprise everyone except perhaps her lesbian daughter. Roger Ebert espoused this reading of the movie, writing: "I Am Love" is an amazing film. It is deep, rich, human. It is not about rich and poor, but about old and new. It is about the ancient war between tradition and feeling.”

Emma appears caught between the contrasting paths represented by her son and daughter, each embodying opposing values she must navigate. Her son, idealistic and devoted to preserving family traditions, symbolizes adherence to societal expectations and duty. In contrast, her daughter, newly liberated as a lesbian unafraid to embrace her desires and explore the sensual world, represents a break from convention and a pursuit of personal freedom. Emma’s internal conflict is evident in her actions, particularly in her initial alignment with her daughter’s path. She cuts her hair short, mirroring her daughter’s style, and adopts similar colors in her wardrobe, signaling her choice to explore a freer, more authentic version of herself.

Lastly, Guadagnino demonstrates how amore can be a disruptive force. The film explores the immense power and irresistible allure of love, portraying it as a force of nature that can both inspire and consume. The characters appear as if they are possibly under the spell of Cupid, their actions seemingly guided by an uncontrollable drive toward passion and connection.

Similar works

• The movies of Luchino Visconti, especially The Leopard, which also deals with a similar family and legacy-type situation
• The films of Douglas Sirk, which focused on emotional melodramas and women’s issues, such as Magnificent Obsession, Written on the Wind, and All That Heaven Allows
• The visually poetic movies of Terence Malick, especially Days of Heaven
• The book Madame Bovary
• Hitchcock’s Vertigo in how Emma pursues the object of her obsession
• The Age of Innocence
• Fanny and Alexander
• Ratatouille

Other films by Luca Guadagnino

• A Bigger Splash
• Call Me by Your Name
• Suspiria
• Bones and All
• Challengers
• Queer