I Am Love

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Year Released: 2009
Rating: 1.5

Rich people, it seems, have problems in life, too: in the formidable Recchi clan of Milan, the one grand-daughter comes out of the closet, the grandson would rather run a restaurant with a young chef (than worry about the family business) and the young chef would rather plow the grandson's mother (Tilda Swinton). If that description makes it sound like there's a lot going on, then I apologize for deceiving you: this movie, with its luscious imagery, is almost entirely luscious imagery: it almost revels in its textual vapidity and fights as hard as it can to contain as little actual psychological motivation for its characters as possible. Not even The Tilda (article required) can flesh out her own bony, presumably tormented creation: what draws her to her son's friend and, ultimately, her ex-communication from the land of wealth can only be due to the burden of a loveless marriage and all that wealth making one so, so lonely. Also, the death-by-swimming-pool-slip is simply dumb.