Review : "I Am Love" (2009) - movie by Luca Guadagnino

It is not uncommon for me to disagree with the "mainstream" views of movie critics. It certainly is a good idea to keep the "emperor´s new clothes" goggles on at all times. There are movies, there are great movies and then there are masterpieces. Whenever the term "masterpiece" easily flow from newspaper critics, it is time to be aware. Critics need to make a living and they also need to build a reputation of being able to spot the good from the bad. Now and again a movie come along, that seem to be specifically made for the purpose of being a critic favorite, in the fashion of "I can easily call this a masterpiece and get away with it". "I Am Love" is such a kind of movie.

The plot is about a very wealthy Milanese family, where the "patriarchal" father who grew his own company, needs to let it go to his son and his sons son, the latter part, arriving as a big surprise for the rest of the family. The fulcrum of the story though, is the daughter in law, who is expected to follow the husband into the prescribed, predictable and boring life of a directors wife. But something is stirring in her, when she meets a young and independent boheme like man, who rouse her inner passions.

She starts a secret love affair with the young man and gets her desires fulfilled in his mountain love shack. And this is basically the story of the movie. The scenes tend to be drawn out beyond what the scene or the story can hold. The first half of the movie is basically there to establish the notion that she "suffers" from the "patriarchy" and its "unreasonable" demands on women to support the husbands in their important role as company leaders.

Everything in the Milan household is shown as strict, orderly, predictable, inorganic, emotionless and cold. The city street is filled with snow. They sit orderly and behave as expected at the dinner table with the "patriarch" and the end. The lead character is russian and sticks out with her pale expression and red hair, but this may also be a nod at being a feminist and refer to the communism of the soviet union.

In any case, the portraits of the men, family and the woman´s "rebellion" just to get her hands on some young stud is so predictable and actually not that engaging. I mean she must have decided to marry into this family in the first place so why is she all of a sudden so hostile towards it? This is a much more interesting angle that would interest me to follow, than her loins getting hot for some young dude (who actually looks very timid in his behavior, as if she is the dominant person in the relationship).

The cinematography is used to point out the differences in experience by keeping family and related very strictly ordered and cold, while the love shack in the mountain is organic, green and sandy colors and disorderly and everyday like. Obviously the female leads attraction goes in this direction, but the overall experience feels way too predictable and two dimensional. The story is not engaging at all and I kept waiting and waiting for this "masterpiece" to appear.

I waited in vain as this is certainly not a masterpiece. The characters are not engaging or really believable, the cinematography is too safe in its simplistic and predictable duality. It takes too long to set up the leads emotional situation and then goes too fast in bringing it to a new place, that feels rushed and undeveloped. The sex scenes are just that, sex scenes and they are neither hot, sexy, romantic or erotic ... they are just objective registration of an action between two people.

There is a very small side story about her daughter coming out of her lesbian closet and wanting her mother´s accept. This she gives her (off course), but we don´t get any real development of this bit, which would also, to me at least, be a vastly more interesting aspect of the story than the "love shack".

5/10