Tilda Swinton stars as the Russian wife of an Italian industrialist whose family teeters on the precipice of big changes in the drama “I Am Love.”
Amid a lushly realized family gathering, a family patriarch announces he is retiring and will turn over his company to his son and grandson (Pippo Delbono, Flavio Parenti). His daughter-in-law (Swinton) discovers secrets she wishes she hadn’t learned about her daughter even as she becomes increasingly absorbed by the cooking of her son’s friend, a master chef.
Like many a European film, director Luca Guadagnino’s work takes a leisurely approach to moving the story forward, instead losing itself in an elegant fog — a studied reverie — in which long stretches without meaningful dialogue leave the audience guessing as to what the characters’ motivations might be. When there is talk, it tends toward the profoundly meaningless, as in “Happy? Happy is a word that makes one sad.”
As things pick up in the second half, the splendid photography and tempestuous John Adams score cannot quite conceal that the film is uncomfortably close to being an extravagantly elongated, Fendi-clad episode of “Dynasty.”