A Feast for the Senses

Produced by and starring Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton (who learned to speak Italian for the project), Luca Guadagnino’s epic new film I Am Love tells the story of Emma Recchi, a Russian expat living in Milan as the matriarch of the Recchi textile dynasty. Increasingly alienated from her pristine existence, she embarks on a love affair that proves both transcendental in its beauty and catastrophic in its ramifications. As the plot unfolds, Guadagnino’s exquisitely daring cinematography—oddly angled and drawn-out shots—captures Emma organizing feasts at the Recchi estate (Milan’s Art Deco masterpiece Villa Necchi), bustling through the Piazza Duomo on a shopping expedition and unleashing her passion in the glorious Sanremo countryside, where the lush wildlife blurrily swoons before the camera with palpable eroticism. The film’s aesthetic splendor also includes costumes by Silvia Venturini Fendi and Raf Simons for Jil Sander, a series of intricate repasts created by Michelin-starred chef Carlo Cracco, and a soundtrack by revered minimalist composer John Adams. There is a lot to digest, even beyond the gripping domestic drama at the core of I Am Love. But Guadagnino is a master of synthesis, likening his film to epicurean wizardry: “When you do a consommé, you cook a lot of ingredients slowly for a long time, a complicated culinary process that gets you a cup of clear broth that tastes beautiful. I would say that is what we tried to do. We really got to the essence of things.” I Am Love is released in the UK on April 9 and will hit US shores this June.