The Luca Guadagnino movie I Am Love was released in 2009 and is now available digitally and looking at the piece as one of his earlier works, you can see how it influenced some of his biggest hits. For many, Guadagnino was not a name they knew until the 2017 film adaptation of Call Me By Your Name. But I Am Love takes us to Guadagnino’s beloved Italy in a mix of two of his more well-known works. 

Emma (Tilda Swinton) is a woman who married a rich man in Milan. Her husband Tancredi (Pippo Delbono) is getting ready to take over the family business with their son, Edoardo Recchi Jr. (Flavio Parenti). Their life is beautiful and perfect until she meets a friend of her son’s, a chef named Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini).

Suddenly, her picture perfect life is displayed in vivid snapshots of her sex life with Antonio and their escapades through food. But eventually their love affair catches up with her and we get to see how quickly her life can change over one choice. The film is stunning to look at, as are all of Guadagnino’s films, but what fascinated me the most about I Am Love is that you can clearly see where themes and shots from his others films came from this one. 

I Am Love marked one of the four films that Swinton and Guadagnino collaborated on. Outside of I Am Love, the two worked on the 1999 film The Protagonists first. Then the two would go on to do two other films after I Am Love, including A Bigger Splash in 2015 and finally Suspiria in 2018. And while they have not collaborated on Guadagnino’s more recent string of successful films, I Am Love is an interesting collaborative piece between the two. 

Bits of Guadagnino’s other work littered in

Had this been an introductory point to Guadagnino’s work, I think it would have hit differently, but it is much like the 1998 film Following in Christopher Nolan’s filmography for me. Once you know what they are capable of now, movies like this just do not hit quite the same. It is a bit messy, disjointed, and not as cohesive as the rest of his work, but you can see the beginnings of what made him a household name in the states. 

Given the setting, the connection to Call Me By Your Name is inevitable. But there is a beautiful sex scene between Emma and Antonio that is reminiscent of moments shared between Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer). But there is the cheating scandal of it all, instantly connecting back to movies like Challengers (2024). You could even make a case for both Queer (2024) and Bones and All (2022). 

But when it comes down to I Am Love as its own movie, it is unfortunately a victim to time. We know what Guadagnino is now capable of, so looking at this film as an example of his work forces you to compare it to the Guadagnino movies we know and love today and it pales in comparison. 

I Am Love re-releases on digital platforms starting April 14.