Magnolia in ‘Love’ with Swinton and Luca Guadagnino’s Latest

Thanks to a couple of buyer friends and our West Coast correspondent Yama Rahimi for sending me into the last screening for Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love – the film is pure bliss, Tilda Swinton is not surprisingly, spot on and who knew, fluent in Italian and as I had remarked and so does this Magnolia Pictures press release, it falls into Visconti territory (The Leopard/Death in Venice). Magnolia Films (who’ve worked with Swinton this summer with the difficult to market title Erick Zonca’s Julia) have picked up the rights to the pic – another post-TIFF pick up that demonstrates the new wait and see trend in buyers.  

A sumptuous, ambitious and complex drama, I AM LOVE features a masterful performance from Swinton, who speaks Italian and Russian in the film. Compared by critics to Visconte’s The Leopard in its skillful dissection of the cultivated lives of an aristocratic Italian family, I AM LOVE was born out of a longtime friendship between Guadagnino and Swinton, who previously collaborated on 1999’s The Protagonists and began discussing the project over seven years ago. Also starring Flavio Parenti, Gabriele Ferzetti, Pippo Delbono and Edoardo Gabbriellini, it features a powerful score from acclaimed minimalist composer John Adams, and costume design from fashion icon Jil Sander.