I Am Love

While Tilda Swinton has often impressed me, she’s never truly blown me away. In fact, I find her participation in the Narnia films tiresome and annoying. But if her place in Narnia is what pays the bills and enables her to make astoundingly good pictures like I Am Love, then I can almost forgive the existence of the “Jesus is a lion” movies. Here, Swinton plays a Russian woman who marries an Italian man and lives an empty life in a big house—until a young chef awakens her in many ways. This is an Italian movie, and Swinton learned how to speak some Italian and Russian for the part of Emma Recchi. Not only does she speak fluent Italian in this movie; she does so with an authentic Russian accent—and she makes all of it seem natural and easy. The look of Luca Guadagnino’s movie has a classic sweep that brings to mind the works of Francis Ford Coppola and even Hitchcock. This marks a new high in Swinton’s career.