Is it possible to be addicted to a movie? I've watched "I Am Love" by Luca Guadagnino three times, once in a theater, twice on a VCR, and I can feel an urge coming on for a fourth fix. Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton), a Milanese matron from the mega-rich Recchi family, becomes involved with her grown son's best friend, a chef. A commoner, this guy -- which brings to mind the gamekeeper in "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and Julien Sorel in Stendhal's "The Red and the Black." The damage sustained by the Recchi family and business also references Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks." The film's melodramatic tone, with love presented as an absolute, a religion or calling that must be honored, even as it wrecks lives, suggests director Douglas Sirk, along with opera giants Verdi and Puccini.
It scarcely matters whether you factor in these homages, since this rapturously beautiful film , a high point of the 2009 Toronto Film Festival, works simply as superb cinematic storytelling. It opens with monochromatic images of a wintry Milan, sorrowful, snow-encrusted sculptures which may be mortuary figures foreshadowing a tragic denouement. On the soundtrack is the urgent, driving score of John Adams, arguably America's greatest living composer. So magical and unexpected is the opening sequence, you sense you're in the hands of a master.
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