I Am Love

Data
Title: Io sono l'amore
Year: 2010
Length: 120 minutes
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Writers: Luca Guadagnino, Barbara Alberti, Ivan Cotroneo & Walter Fasano, story by Guadagnino
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabbriellini
Music: non-original music (mostly John Adams)
Oscars: nomination for Best Costume Design
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), a few days ago
Synopsis: a woman married to a wealthy man has an affair with her son's friend



My reaction
Concept: Terrible. There's a reason this sort of story has been out of fashion for 100 years. It's because it's crap.
Story: Terrible. It's not only that I don't like this sort of story - also, there's just not much story there to dislike. Nothing happens until about an hour into the movie, and then it's mostly just people having sex.
Characters: Bad. As far as I can tell, I think the whole point of the movie is that the protagonist has no identity? Or something like that? Which is not interesting in an Ingmar Bergman sort of way, but instead just means the audience has no reason to care about anything she does.
Dialog: Indifferent.
Pacing: Bad.
Cinematography: Great. Can a movie include a lingering shot of the underside of a man's ballsack and still have great cinematography? Yes, apparently it can; it's that good (the cinematography, not the ballsack (I could have done without the ballsack)).
Special effects/design: Great.
Acting: Great.
Music: Great.
Subjective Rating: 3/10 (Bad). The script is crap. If ever the other aspects of a film could have compensated for a worthless script, this movie would have done it. Amazing visuals, perfect acting, striking music... But the script is still crap. It could have been painted frame-by-frame by Leonardo Da Vinci and I still wouldn't care about anything that happens in this movie.
Objective Rating: 2.1/4 (Okay).