CITYist

We’ll admit it: drawn in by the visually lush scenery and hypnotizing Mad Men-esque clothes in I Am Love’s trailer, we assumed the film took place sometime in the mid-century. Something like A Single Man with Tilda Swinton, in Italian. But when Swinton’s character carefully handled a plastic CD case, we we’re pulled out of a period lull into the modern day. Such a realization, one third of the way into a film, can be disorienting; but like the sexual and philosophical liberation that Swinton’s character undergoes, the change seemed to pull the movie into a whole new realm. I Am Love is part family saga (The Godfather, without the crime), part foodie film (Julie and Julia, with eroticism) and part feminist manifesto (insert any movie involving a housewife and an affair). But because this film has Swinton, who blossoms from a shyly prim rose into the stark, avant garde crane we usually see on the red carpet, it manages to rise above any cliched plot points.