I Am Love

Tilda Swinton and Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous, operatic vision of an aristocratic family disrupted by unstoppable forces of passion.

Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous, operatic vision of an aristocratic family disrupted by unstoppable forces of passion was developed over an 11-year period in collaboration with co-producer and star Tilda Swinton.

Inspired by a line in Umberto Giordano’s 1896 opera La mamma morta (an opera also referenced in Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia), it follows the tribulations of the industrialist Recchi family, whose cool exterior is disrupted when Emma (Swinton) embarks on an affair with a chef. With its focus on food and finery I Am Love is cinema at its most unashamedly bourgeois, a rich and flamboyant sensory luxury.