In The Beginning

In the Beginning is the story of a small time crook who falls into a big con and thereby becomes both a hero to the locals and a mensch in his own eyes. The con and the project are doomed, but both are sweet while they last.
This suspenseful and curiously moving film includes a virtuoso lead performance by François Cluzet, was in competition at Cannes, and received eleven nominations at the French César awards. Director Xavier Giannoli (of The Singer) has again made a picture that's a sensitive study both of in individual and of a region. He also succeeds, like Lucas Belvaux in Rapt, in turning a news story that might seem on the face of it rather trivial into psychological and philosophical thriller. It makes you think, it keeps you on the edge of your seat, and it shows once again that the French really know how to make movies.
Paul (Cluzet), who uses the fake name Philippe Miller, is a petty con man who travels all around France Xing off construction projects on his highway map of the country. Taking down names and phone numbers from roadside signs and making deft use of product catalogs, he steals and resells parts and equipment from suppliers by pretending to be a project manager.
Miller hits pay dirt, and ultimately gets in much deeper than he plans, when he comes upon a highway project abandoned two years earlier due to its invading the habitat of a protected beetle. Faking involvement with the parent company in the project, he collects money and starts it up again.
Miller meets the eager, energetic Monika (Stéphanie Sokolinski, the singer known as Soko), who works at his motel, and her fresh-faced, sensitive boyfriend Nicolas (Vincent Rottiers). Before long he also meets the local mayor, Stéphane (Emmanuelle Devos) and becomes her lover.
Miller gets a local bank to issue him checks and advance funds for payments to suppliers that demand immediate payment. The bank wants a piece of the action too. But they will require authentication that Miller can never provide.
As the project takes off, Cluzet, as Miller, at first seems to be imploding. When asked embarrassing questions, he has a dozen ways of deflecting them. If all else fails he just says he has another appointment and runs off. The situation is too tempting for Miller to resist. He knows he's getting in way over his head. But isn't it the nature of the con man to seek bigger and bigger deceptions? Actually nobody loses much here.
The whole thing that terrified Miller begins to delight him. For once he is somebody. "I have wasted a lot of time" is one of his saddest lines to Stéphane, in bed. Of course ultimately Miller is going to go to jail, but he starts desperately trying to get the segment of highway completed before the time limit on payments ends and many bills become due. He's now paying out in salaries to the workers all the many thousands he accumulated at the outset. The money doesn't matter to him any more. He becomes a worker himself, pushing a broom to spread the asphalt in the rain. It's winter and the project is becoming more and more difficult to finish.

In the Beginning is a nail-biter all the way through, and in the end you will react as the local community did to the real con man in this story: some of you will take him for a real S.O.B. Others will believe him to be a pretty nice guy. Environment and action create identity. We are what we do. Here, Miller is what he makes happen. Workers don't always care about the utility of their employment. They don't much care about beetles. (What happens to them is barely mentioned. In fact they were transplanted to a forest.)

Cluzet, an extremely busy and popular French actor most recently seen by American audiences in Guillaume Canet's Tell No One (another hit thriller), is a neutral Frank Capra everyman, an individual who can seem shut down, but with a twinkle in the eye, a grump with a jovial chap hiding inside waiting to be let out. The film gradually lets out that chap, and then, when the big corporation comes in and the police descend, the highway project lit up at night like a film set, Miller is a little man who's strangely triumphant in defeat, waving the battered flag of his fake company.
This is another marvelous French film that transcends genre, turning a crime thriller into celebration of work. Judging by this and Giannoli's The Singer/Quand j'étais chanteur, he has great sensitivity to solitary wanderers and paints rich psychological portraits in a complex social environment. He doesn't know so well how to end things. There is a little uncertainty whether we can take À l'origine as a mood piece about economic desperation (as Up in the Air partly is; but this is Down on the Ground), a process picture, or a crime thriller. But it achieves success in each genre, because of the energetic world the director creates, the rich moral ambiguity he preserves. The secondary characters are of course a bit schematic, a bit obvious, but with such actors, they never seem that way. Like Laurent Cantet's study of a strike and of class conflict within a family, Human Resources, In the Beginning is about the human need to be doing work.

Chris Knipp, Berkeley, California

The Torture-Chamber files: Maapilai

I know. I'm probably the last person in this forum and most certainly the least qualified fool amidst a roaring crowd of eight hundred plus inside a packed cinema hall to even comment on a movie such as this, let alone review it. My eight year old niece sitting next to me (upon whose insistence I ventured to come along) is so much more enthusiastic, let alone being accustomed to the so-called Indian "masala" genre of movies than me, and it frightens me to think that someone as young as she actually enjoys watching movies that have such lethal force and relentless assault on the senses, both moral and virtual.. that it feels like trying to hold a lighted candle in your hands while attempting to stand beneath a fully opened dam, leaving you senseless, reviled, angry, disillusioned, helpless, yet… deeply hurt. I never even needed to get myself inside a movie-hall to know that this was going to be a fish-out-of-water experience for me. Though Tamil movies aren't new to me, the mere look at the poster itself gave me the shudders. But this.. This one went a step further. I was a fish out of water on a hook-string, mishandled, scaled, skewered, fin-clipped and nearly dunked into a frying pan, before I hit water again. All this while my dear niece whooped and squealed all eyes and ears to a systemic deluge of insanity that ensued during the next three hours.

Still, while I watched Maapilai, I realized that this is perhaps the most important movie I've watched, long since movie-watching for me, stopped being a mere source of entertainment and turned into a form of therapy. Like applying polish to the insides of a wax-tin, most movies in Tamil Nadu have established some sort of a chassis-like framework for which wear & tear does not even seem like a matter of concern. Every time the system looks like it's slowly evolving into modern ways with modern directors like Venkat Prabhu, Mani Ratnam, Baala and Mysskin to ride the momentum of popular support, there come movies such as this one, to wipe away the few advancements we've seen in it's stride, and take us back to the stone-ages. And when we talk about wiping away, I'm thinking about a chalk-coated slate being furiously scraped clean, with the sharp end of a pitchfork. Ever since I started watching art films by the truckload, I also inculcated the habit of forcing myself to watch from time to time, a notorious, purposefully vile and horrid film, not simply for the torture-value and unintended laughs, but mostly for the pain. Pain numbs the senses and when your emotional quotient feels like it has touched such a low so as to hit a reset button within yourself, even slightly happier things in life feel far sweeter than you could've conceived. That was the reason and agenda behind me agreeing to watch Maapilai. This was its noble purpose.

Hero, heroine, villain ("villi", in this case) and yes, a comedian. That's pretty much everything that the masala template needs, say to start from scratch. To cut a crappy story into a rubber dinghy, a relatively poor, seemingly well brought-up fellow marries a daughter of an insanely rich, super-aristocratic empress, automatically falls into the Mom-in-law's bad books, and proceeds to teach her lessons on altruism. For this purpose, he has a convenient flashback: He's a rowdy in disguise. So it's gonna be a clichéd tit-for-tat battle between the 'high-class' and 'low-class'. Mind you, the producers want you to conceive a clash of titans climax. So here's the still-gawky Dhanush trying his best to puff as many cigarettes and bare as many teeth as possible, simply to look macho, with the required "pattai" on his forehead, when the script calls for him to look baby-good.

The heroine's purpose in the movie is still a blur. Her job is to simply appear coy and giggly while our man slithers his rubbery, lizard-like hands around every square inch of her body. Perhaps this was the director's revenge for her not conceding to dance for the film's mandatory item number. What's most obvious is that her act here looks quite desperate, yet sufficiently infused with lethargy, while she's trying to gain a foothold in the industry, mainly with the help of her fair, glossy skin. As far as the Item number is concerned, the alternative was to bring in a lady ODed on rape-pills, make her look like a purposefully provocative, towngirl-cum-pornstar and let the choreographer and composer freak out.

I have no clue as to what kind of potential the director would've looked for when he chose Manisha Koirala for his negative role. If a floating buoy in the middle of an ocean could channel emotion, even that will beat the competition with "Raaja Raajeswari" and her fixed, walk-on-the-clouds look, stoical facial reactions and an emotional quotient ranging anywhere within those of a mosquito.

I have profound respect for Vivek as an accomplished comedian. He is one of the last few talents in the industry who can make even a murderous goon roar with laughter. But for his role in Maapilai, I'm guessing the poor man must have been given a roll of toilet-paper for his script, and simply act-out his outraged reaction to the insult. His antics and attempts at humor are both disturbing and depressing, with an accent so fake, you might think he's trying to portray a vocally handicapped person. But even that possibility is ruled out, when he doubles as a clown pretending to be a rich-rich-RICHer fellow than our villi herself, to aid our hero's sinister plans.

The traditional six-pack dance sequences don't add much to aid the story. So do the enormous fight sequences. But is that deterrent enough to keep our producer from spending more than half his budget on them? Chaansey illa. Doing away with these elements in a masala movie is tantamount to sacrilege. It's an industry, after all..let everyone, even the extras have their portion of the cash-crop. The masala-genre to Indian cinema, is after all the exact opposite of what junk food is, to the vegan diet.

I haven't had the chance to watch the much talked-about predecessor to this movie, which is what has been copied into this film. Apparently the older film was a runaway hit and had garnered a lot of acclaim for the superstar. And since Dhanush is now on a mission to copy-paste whatever his father-in-law has accomplished, he's probably under the impression that his career trajectory is on a preset path. All he has to do is to pick out any one of the superstar's hits, add some "low-class cheri" element to it, and consider himself re-invented. He is either everything his father-in-law hoped for, or every single shred of his worst fears, very neatly compiled.

In spite of the fact that Maapilai fully matched up to my expectations and ended up being a tirade that will forever aid as a negative low-point in my experience with movies in general, it couldn't match-up to what my previous torture-chamber inside a screening of golmaal-3 could provide. Still, the purpose was achieved and I came out of the hall feeling satisfactorily emaciated and unnerved. And to prove my point, I went back to the same hall the very next night, to watch Liam Neeson in Unknown and Mysskin's Yudham Sei back-to-back. Words couldn't describe how pleased I was with both, insomuch that I felt like I was watching something as epic as Inception. As for my lovely niece, roaring with laughter at my shell-shocked face, while walking out of the cinema hall, I'm just happy she isn't being judgmental about me for having let her watch this load of crap.

Elite Troop 2

 In 2008 at the Berlin International Film Festival, a Brazilian movie that depicted the work of Rio de Janeiro’s special police force BOPE won the prestigious golden bear award for best film. The police unit, which often shows up in Human Rights Watch reports and is considered one of the toughest and most professional urban warfare units in the world is the spearhead of the crime-ridden city’s law enforcement policy and has a reputation of being comparatively non-corrupt. Jose Padilha, the director, originally wanted to turn fact accounts from the book of the similar name into a documentary but they changed course and subsequently made one of the most successful Brazilian movies ever.
Tropa de Elite (aka Elite Squad) tells the story of BOPE Cpt. Nascimento (Wagner Moura) who is looking for a promising recruit to succeed him at the force. He has marital problems and panic attacks, it is time for him to step down and give way to fresh blood in the ranks of the elite squad. The next round of boot camp, which to North-Americans might look familiar to the Navy Seal BUDS camp, churns out Neto and Andre. Andre is a smart, idealistic and ambitious guy who wants to save the world. Despite the social inequality in Brazil that makes it hard for an unprivileged, colored man like Andre to succeed, he takes up studying law, and he enters BOPE. Neto meanwhile works himself through the corrupt local police before being fed up, being discovered and joining BOPE. He is a short tempered, impulsive guy, who tends to get himself into trouble. The two quickly form the new BOPE class’ top troopers. Andre falls in love with Maria, a co-student who heads an NGO in one of Rio’s slums (favelas), but she does not know he is a cop. While Rio prepares for the Pope’s visit and steps up the daily raids into the slums to capture (and kill) drug traffickers, Andre’s involvement with Maria gets more and more complicated, as her NGO can only operate with the drug gangs’ blessing. Things get out of hand quickly, with Neto losing his life…… and Nascimento and Andre set out to track the gang down…
In 2007, footage of Tropa de Elite got leaked and pirated, which however made the movie all the more famous. It is a compelling story of the Brazilian boom city’s social tensions, and the horrendous violence perpetrate on both sides of the law. It is a shocking movie, shot with an eye for detail and a convincing cast. The movie keeps its documentary-style feel and the grittiness of a front-line report. The movie will not only satisfy those hungry to see a realistic action movie about special forces, or those wanting to see top of the line Brazilian cinema, a glimps of this great country’s life on the big screen, but also those looking for an on-the-edge-of-your-seat social drama – with a great soundtrack to boot.
Three years later, it is Berlinale time again here in frosty Berlin. I have secured tickets to watch the sequel to Tropa de Elite, which is titled Tropa de Elite 2: O Inimigo Agora é Outro (the English title is: Elite Squad 2 – The Enemy Within). The much anticipated second part had to live up to high expectations and promised to be a lot more controversial – and with a bigger budget. It is not easy to make movies in Brazil I was told, that is why the opening credits are preceded by a whole series of logos, the movie however is already the highest grossing Brazilian movie in Brazil to date. But let me cut to the chase.
Tropa de Elite 2 takes place today, and Nascimento has lost both his wife and custody of his son. War is a drug, he says, so he went back to his old job, commanding a BOPE squad led by Andre, as ranking Lieutentant. When a riot in Rio’s maximum security prison Bangu 1 breaks out, his squad is at the helm and Andre’s men are facing an armed gang bound to slaughter the rest of the (rival) inmates. A law professor and human rights activist the gang leader (played by Brazilian musician Seu Jorge) trusts is called in to defuse the situation, but Andre does what he was told in BOPE boot camp, and all hell breaks lose, with BOPE walking out having massacred the rioters.
The city has a scandal on its hands, with the human rights activist publicly denouncing Nascimento, Andre and BOPE, the blunt weapon of the governor. Nascimento however is at the same time called a hero by the conservative electorate, and the governor promotes him to deputy secretary of public security, while Andre has to bite the bullet and gets demoted. Rio politics, fired up by the conservative media, lets Nascimento lose, and he uses BOPE to clean up slum after slum. But the vacuum left by the drug cartels is quickly filled by corrupt police militias, who won’t be as easily driven back as the drug dealers. The human rights activist seizes the wave of sympathy and runs for the local parliament…. Nascimento is confronted with a dilemma. The net of corruption, and BOPE’s role in the corrupt schemes of the politicians and police chiefs are about to be uncovered with the help of the parliamentarian, an integral crusader almost, and a courageous journalist…. Nascimento is right on the front line – and in the line of fire….
Where Elite Squad was something of an introduction to the world of favelas and BOPE, Tropa de Elite 2 is an advanced study of the country’s complex crime problem. Brazil, which is one of the world’s fastest growing economies and Latin America’s economic and political powerhouse, has a huge inequality problem, which is on heavy display in a metropolis like Rio de Janeiro, where beautiful and expensive beach penthouses can be seen before a panorama of slum dwellings on the surrounding hills. That stark contrast fires social conflict. BOPE is right in the middle. The news reports of Rio police backed by federal military forces invading some of the most famous slums of Rio only this last fall illustrate, how “real” this movie is, despite its fictional nature. The political subtones of this sequel and the quite open criticism of the roots of the problems, make it an especially controversial movie that is sure to have an enormous impact considering its huge success. I was enormously entertained by the film, which offers a number of climaxes and had me sweating in my seat. A movie that is as intense as it gets, without laying it on too thickly. A smart, brutal, beautiful tour de force, a brilliant showcase of Brazilian cinema and an action-packed crime adventure which I hope will win over audiences around the world – the pounding gun fights will stick with you.

Confessions

Nakashima's visually stunning "Kokuhaku" is a tour de force of emotionally charged drama and engrossing visuals. Its thought-provoking and often times controversial storyline will haunt one's senses and challenge your notions of morality.
In fact the story's ambiguity is cleverly represented in its title "Kokuhaku" which in Japanese can be defined in two ways - not only to confess one's sins but also to confess one's love.
The story inventively starts in the middle with pretty Middle School teacher, Moriguchi Yuko (wonderfully realized by J-Dorama favorite Matsu Takako) announcing to her homeroom class that she is retiring. Of course, her apathetic and unruly students snidely celebrate her departure with laughter and high-fives. Yuko proceeds to then tell the students of the reason of her departure. In flashback we see the devastating and tragic loss of her five-year old daughter Manami (cute Ashida Mana), who drowned in the school's pool one night. While authorities label the death as an accidental drowning, Yuko discovers to her shock a more sinister explanation. Her daughter was intentionally drowned by two of her own students - the emotionally troubled "mama's boy" Shiomura Naoki (Fujiwara Kaoru) and the emotionally distant yet intellectually gifted Murakawa Shinya (Amami Juri), whom she just calls "Boy B" and "Boy A" respectively. Knowing that the authorities will not take any serious action given the fact that the two are just 13 year old minors, Yuko nonchalantly explains that she has already taken her revenge on the two by tainting their lunch milk with a syringe containing blood from her ex-husband who has HIV (she is also HIV Positive). Thus begins the story proper which examines the shattered lives of these two students as well as the tragic aftermath of this "confession" and of the cruel horrors that transpire from it. Like "Pandora's Box" Yuko's revenge unleashes an evil more darker than she could have ever imagined.
"Kokuhaku", based on the best selling 2008 Japanese novel of the same name by author Minato Kanae, is a blunt indignation of Japanese society and takes particular critical aim at its increasingly apathetic and narcissistic youth. Nakashima's screenplay drives this hard portrayal in by showing us that despite the unspeakable crime committed by the two students, the true evil lies in the resultant bullying and social ostracizing that results at the hands of their classmates. Despite all the information that has been distributed by the media on AIDS and how it is contracted, the ignorance and social stigma shown by the students is truly horrifying.
"Kokuhaku" is not a standard revenge movie and Nakashima masterfully deviates from the norm by focusing not on Yuko's rage but rather on the "monsters" that Yuko holds responsible for her daughter's death. As the movie unfolds, I unexpectedly found myself actually pitying these two poor souls as they were more-or-less victims themselves of unfortunate childhood traumas. While it doesn't excuse them of their crime, it does go far at explaining their motives and forces audiences to feel sympathy towards their plight.
The story's emotional impact is very much due to its extraordinary cast headed by the wonderful Matsu Takako (Long Vacation, Hero). I can understand now why Nakashima insisted on only having Matsu Takako portraying the part of the vengeful Yuko as she brings both a sense of tragic sadness and darkness to her role. Her quiet and understated portrayal is very effective (almost similar to Kaji Mieko's "Jyoshu Sasori" character) and if fact makes her character even more effective in a sense as it's almost like a slow, seething anger. Fujiwara Kaoru and Amami Juri are also quite good as the two juveniles. While Fujiwara tends to overplay his of part Naoki to the point of hysterics, Amami is the one who stands out as the intellectually brilliant Shin whose anti-social persona is just an affront to hide his need for his scientist mother's love and approval. Amami plays Shin as both a tragic and frightening character study. Hashimoto Ai is also great as Kitahara Mitsuki, Shin's only friend and kindred spirit who develops a compassion for the troubled youth and who foolishly believes that her love alone can change him. She is absolutely beautiful and is a definite star in the making. Kimura Yoshino is also wonderful as Naoki's devoted mother. Her performance is very unnerving and showed the unyielding love that her character had for her troubled son (a nice mirror to Matsu Takako's devotion to her character's daughter). Likable actor Okada Masami gives a good performance as the hopelessly optimistic and naive substitute teacher Yoshiteru Terada who attempts to reach out to both Naoki and Shin but whose general concern and good intentions soon become another destructive instrument in Yuko's revenge scheme. While only a small role Yamada Kinera's portrayal of Shin's estranged scientist mother was touching.
The cinematography compliments of Nakashima regular Ato Masakazu and Ozawa Atsushi are breathtaking and beautiful. They add to the emotional impact of the story and are absolutely stunning. Even the gory bits were beautifully rendered and shot (which seems almost strangely ironic).
"Kokuhaku" shatters the perpetual foreign stereotype of Japanese students as polite, docile, overly respectful and timid children and shows us that like in any other countries, some of today's youth have succumbed to the stresses of peer pressure, sense of self worth and purpose and have become selfish and disillusioned. The film is a cautionary tale of those dangers and also challenges the audience's notion and senses of morality. Are Yuko's a actions justified or has she become even more despicable, irresponsible and reckless as the students she holds response for her daughter's death? Does the ends really justify the means or does society really create its own monsters?

My Name is Tilda Swinton, and I Am Love

It is one thing to be an accomplished actor and appear modest while appearing to share, even allude your personal success over those around you; it’s a whole different paradox to be an acting phenomenon like Tilda Swinton and say you don’t deserve it, for frankly she hates her profession and loathes what she does best. As far as Swinton’s concerned, she’s not even really an actor. She could give up her whole career for something like poetry, as easily as she had switched into the profession from writing prose. “I’m a complete fraud,” she claims in an interview on her college life. “I was accepted as a poet. And I got there and I stopped writing. I started performing very half-heartedly.” In fact, Tilda sees herself as not an artist, but an artist’s material for art, an unmoulded lump of clay that takes form under the minstrels of an artisan. She is the artsy equivalent of an untethered, suicidal, mountain-climbing expert, who wants to lose his life while the very skill he possesses protects him from doing exactly that. Media-hogs might call her a weirdo. Celebrity gossip-mongers hate her for her defiant, indifferent attitude towards public gossip. Contemporary art-lovers might remember her as the woman who slept as a piece of installation for a whole week, in the middle of a gallery. Connoisseurs of the film industry know her as the famous actress who doesn’t employ a publicist. Those who live on the glitzy couture ramp might recall a strange fashion show, where every model resembled Swinton, and the only music was her own voice, reading poetry.
So here we have a born Prima Donna, who doesn’t know how to be conventional even if she wants to, playing one of the most conservative, modern roles that could be offered, to a modern actress for whom, bohemianism is something akin to a philosophy. And the fact that she delivers even such a role with steadfast grace is what makes I Am Love so great.
I Am Love was conceived over an extensive period of eleven years, not necessarily daunting for Swinton, considering her loyalty towards all those she’s worked with till today. Luca Guadagnino, the director couldn’t really have asked for more when his close friend and favourite actor agreed not only to act as the lead, but also co-produce his film.

I Am Love opens with a birthday party that has been so meticulously prepared, that it almost readies you for the important role that food will play in the next one and a half hours of the story. We see Swinton in control of the preparations, speaking fluent Italian, with a Russian accent that she learned to genuinely fake. She’s the lady of the household, giving commands to the staff and having the final say in home keeping matters. The household that we behold is not exactly large; large is where you’d start describing it. Every single aspect of the huge residential palace is meant to invoke an overwhelming sense of intimidating grandeur. Every furniture, wall and chandelier look like fragments of one large rock of crystal, and so do those who inhabit this massive space. And today, everyone in the family has assembled for the royal birthday feast. The birthday-boy turns out to be the extremely aged patriarch of the family, Edoardo Reicchi (Gabriele Ferzetti), who has finally decided that the time has come to hand over the reins of the Reicchi family business empire to his son and grandson. Now the older Reicchis have an almost imperceptible, dare say even arrogant sense of pride and aristocracy that almost immediately seems outrageous, in stark contrast with the more liberal attitude that characterizes the grandchildren. Like when the grandson loses a simple betting game in a horserace and the whole family takes it upon themselves as a dent in their own personal pride, berating him endlessly on how it’s impossible for a Reicchi to have lost. Therefore, when so much pride is at stake, it makes sense when the whole family is tense and apprehensive as soon as the old man announces the bequeathing of his business empire to his son and grandson, Edo.
Now Emma, (Swinton) is the maître‘d of the house, she is the wife, mother and daughter-in-law of the house. A character manufactured by circumstances, there’s absolutely nothing in her repertoire of duties that’s more important than fulfilling what the three above-mentioned roles of the household require her to do. She is the feeble, yet nearly non-existent (but not invisible) balance that holds the three generations together, though very nearly a non-entity when it comes to matters involving business. She’s a trophy wife, imported from communist-era Russia, unable to return, and who has learned not to feel repressed, suppressed or oppressed over the years within a family that has made her change her customs, her way of dressing, her language and even her very name in order to blend in. She is in every way, the perfect mother, wife, housekeeper, and the perfect embodiment of a rich Italian’s wife. She knows and accepts the demands of the role of her place in the Reicchi family. She is smiling, gracious, beautiful and very taut and controlled without being cold. And judging by the general mood in the banquet room, it’s pretty obvious that the evening is a grand success for Emma, save for the occasional hiccup when the grand-daughter disappoints the old man with an abstract photograph instead of the regular artwork in paint. As defined, aristocratic and controlled as these initial sequence of events may seem, everything that follows afterwards is a meticulous and rather total deconstruction of whatever had struck you as awesome.

Midway through the party, Emma chances upon a man called Antonio, who turns out to be the guy who tied with Edo over the betting earlier that day. He happens to be a simpleton, with some amazing culinary skills. Emma is intrigued by the man right away, but quickly shies away and rejoins her party.
A couple of years later, Emma discovers through a letter, addressed to her son, about her daughter’s relationship with a girlfriend. Though a fact like this, about a daughter’s sexuality could make a parent go raving mad, under conventional circumstances, we see Emma become quite curious, even holding the letter, re-reading it like as though it’s some talisman. In more than one way, this incident acts as a catalyst, a trigger of sorts that set forth a chain of events that inevitably, but swiftly snowballs into tragedy. Edo is by now sure of the fact that he’s in love with Antonio (now appointed as a cook in the Reicchi’s household), and is trying to get the message across with shy, subtle hints. But Emma, unaware of her son’s feelings and curious about her newfound sexual freedom, also falls in love with the same man, indulging in a secretly contrived, yet passionate affair which under the circumstances, is almost like firing a loose cannon at a dam-wall.
With subtle hints and a heavy feeling of romanticism, Luca Guadagnino’s story unfolds like an Opera in five acts and a cinematic aria to the bourgeoisie with a suffocatingly gaudy sense of opulence and magnitude. Tilda Swinton has described it as “Visconti on acid” which captures something of the sumptuous luxury that the camera captures: pale carpets so thick that footfalls become mute, corridors as highways of marble, interiors designed with a glacial, restrained eye. The men dress-up in bespoken shirts and suits; the women in Jill Sander, Prada and Hermes. This is the feudal nobility of Visconti’s The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) relocated from the Sicily of the Risorgimento to the salone of the haute bourgeoisie of modern-day Milan.
Not since Peter Greeenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover has food looked so sensual and provided an exact metaphor for power and sex. The eating of a succulent langoustine becomes a moment of erotic epiphany for the main character, Emma Reicchi. Every element on the plate is erotically charged, a kama sutra of flavours for the sensual appetites. Meals in the Reicchi dining room become acts of power politics or carnal seduction. The rituals of the table define this class. And, in the end, a sip of translucent soup will play a part in the collapse of the House of Reicchi.

There’s a surprisingly surreal sort of form factor that John Adam’s minimalist music commands, one that might seem perfect for the moment, in a soundtrack, but vibrant and overpowering when listened to on a record. The heavy use of non-amplified duct and reed instruments make it sound really powerful, like a grand ceremonial concerto in the middle of a church, filled with sunlight and apprehension.. Musical geniuses like Adams and Michael Nyman rarely come out of their den-like confines of symphonies and other chamber music. But when they do, this is what results. Adams never even had to do original scoring for the movie. Infact, the entire soundtrack has been wrought out of his well-known operas, Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic, both politically charged and heavy on the grandeur, still not quite out of place in a passionate love story such as this, also the reason for bringing the theatric feel.
I Am Love is a melodramatic riff on the Lady Chatterly/Mellors narrative: aristo, in oppressive marriage, falls for gardener and finds sexual liberation. In the case of I Am Love, Emma Ricchi falls for a cook and upstairs meets downstairs in flagrante delicto. The description of this coupling (like so many of the couplings in D.H. Lawrence) is devoid of joy and humanity. An act of supposed emancipation, feels peculiarly corseted and straight laced. As a consequence, the passion at the heart of I Am Love is reduced to torrid metaphorical gestures that left me rather cold. We learn that if you marry for money or status or power you will get money or status or power, because love cannot be bought but that’s the limit of any moral insight. There is, for example, no exploration of the morality, motives or consequences of Emma Reicchi’s adultery. The audience is simply expected to be unthinkingly swept along by her act of rebellion.
I Am Love is a film of immense pleasures, every one of them beautifully designed, framed and hallmarked. It evokes a social milieu that, while aesthetically rich, is inhabited by economic elite who are emotionally and spiritually infantile. As Tilda Swinton, reflecting on the Reicchi dynasty, admits, “no unearned income is fair, after all; it costs the soul eventually.” For all this melodrama’s sensual delights, I Am Love left me hungry for characters and plot with more psychological and moral depth and flavour. Perhaps, that will come with Guadagnino’s next film. I can’t wait to see how this impressive talent develops. Until then, I will have to live with the delicious memory of that langoustine and that bowl of deadly Russian Oucha soup.

By Fazil, for Passionforcinema.com
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