This film really must be seen on the big screen, first and foremost. It communicates through the evocation of its images, sound and music; less through its story, less through its dialogue, and (arguably) less through its performances even - though Swinton is marvelous. Second, it requires its viewer to be the kind who raves about, not rails against, films like Tarkovsky's 'Mirror', Malick's 'New World' or Wenders' 'Paris, Texas'. But these boxes ticked, Sono L'Amore is a film you will admire immensely.
This is no realist offering, but neither is it coldly stylistic: use of film form is bold, human and sumptuously intimate - Guadignino has to deal with a number of the most powerful moments of human experience in this story, and in each one he does so with gusto, pain and compassion: falling in love, a first act of adultery, a girl's confession to her mother of her homosexuality, the death of a son, his funeral, confession to a husband of love to another... In each scene the camera frees itself of hand or logic, and is guided only with hurt, heart and wonder - with the film's score serving the image as well as any I can remember in the past (we really are in an era of great narrative use of sound these days).
And where so many films of great austerity fail by simply 'ending', Io Sono L'Amore very much 'concludes' - and MY does it do so: the final crescendo of this film will surely go down as one of the most powerful endings in cinema history. I shan't describe it - this film is stilling proof of just how much more rewarding it can be to let a director fill your imagination, rather than a writer merely feed it.
This is no realist offering, but neither is it coldly stylistic: use of film form is bold, human and sumptuously intimate - Guadignino has to deal with a number of the most powerful moments of human experience in this story, and in each one he does so with gusto, pain and compassion: falling in love, a first act of adultery, a girl's confession to her mother of her homosexuality, the death of a son, his funeral, confession to a husband of love to another... In each scene the camera frees itself of hand or logic, and is guided only with hurt, heart and wonder - with the film's score serving the image as well as any I can remember in the past (we really are in an era of great narrative use of sound these days).
And where so many films of great austerity fail by simply 'ending', Io Sono L'Amore very much 'concludes' - and MY does it do so: the final crescendo of this film will surely go down as one of the most powerful endings in cinema history. I shan't describe it - this film is stilling proof of just how much more rewarding it can be to let a director fill your imagination, rather than a writer merely feed it.