I Am Love NYT Critics' Pick

[lsanderson]

Tilda Swinton, as a Russian matriarch married into a wealthy Milanese family, with Edoardo Gabbriellini, as a young chef.
From Tapestried Villa to Sylvan Glade, Aristocratic Women in Love
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: June 18, 2010

Amid all the luxuries on display in the Italian film “I Am Love” — the chandeliers, tapestries and paneled walls, the paintings, statuary and white-gloved servants — nothing holds your gaze as forcefully as Tilda Swinton’s alabaster face. The first time you see that vision, her character, Emma Recchi, a Russian who’s married into a wealthy Milanese family, is stage-managing the lavish birthday party that opens the film. By the end of this often soaringly beautiful melodrama, which closes with a funeral, Emma’s face will have crumpled into a ruin. But it will also be fully alive, having been granted, like Pygmalion’s statue, the breath of life. More