Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabriellinni
Nominated for an Oscar
A tragic love story set at the turn of the millennium in Milan. The film follows the fall of the haute bourgeoisie due to forces of passion and unconditional love.
Emma(Tilda Swinton) left Russia 20 years earlier to follow Tancredi Recchi, the man who had proposed to her. Now a member of a powerful industrial Milanese family, she is the respected mother of three. But Emma, although not unhappy, feels confusedly unfulfilled. One day Antonio, a talented chef and her son’s friend and partner, makes her senses kindle. It does not take long before she embarks on a passionate affair with the sensuous young man.
If a movie about plot, overly drawn characters and artifice, all shot by the book, is what you’re looking for, then this probably isn’t the movie for you.
But if you like people more than stories, if you want to see film-making at its most graceful and organic and inventive, and if you want a musical score that will turn a sidelong glance into an operatic overture, then this is the movie for you. It is a baroque masterwork. A cathedral of a film. Cold as stone but inspiring to the soul.
