Tilda Swinton stars as Emma Recchi in the "I Am Love," written and directed by Luca Guadagnino. The Italian film is being released by Magnolia Pictures on June 18.
Swinton on what drew her to the project, "Change, overcoming the idea of oneself, as created by society, has been one of my main interests since Orlando. In Io Sono L’Amore, a film that Luca and I worked on for 7 years, these themes are presented and they are in a way that is even more magnetic."
Her Character Emma
Swinton says of her character Emma, "The film is about a woman, named Emma, aged between 40 and 50, who doesn’t generate wealth or culture. Her husband Tancredi, a rich manufacturer from North Italy, picked her for her beauty, just as he would have chosen a piece of artwork. Emma is a piece of property; she had children and she fulfilled her role and now she finds herself at that point in life when the cage, the prison she has been living in, vividly appears before her eyes with all its explicit drama. Emma comes from a cage, Russia, that she left in the pre-Gorbachev era to have access to the free world. And in the free world she locked herself up in another cage, the family. And lies."
She continues, "Life is the great engine of change in human beings. It is the great creator of crises, the catalyst for metamorphoses. Emma falls in love with another outcast. Like her. A passion that is seen as unacceptable by her social class, family and society in general. In this, Emma has many predecessors in cinema and literature, like Emma Bovary, Alida Valli from Senso, and Anna Karenina. She is a giving woman; her love is unconditional. A person who is able to face absolutes, like life, death and all absorbing passion and to never give up. She is a pure radical."
Closing Words
"All the characters in this film are trapped but in different ways. Tancredi’s father, the founding father, the maker of fortune, the maker of the family’s status, Gabriele Ferzetti, has reached the point where he has to hand over his power. He makes his choice, because he believes he sees in one of his descendants “the same look”, but that look isn’t there. He doesn’t see that that look he is looking for elsewhere, maybe in Elisabetta, the granddaughter, who is insignificant as a woman in battles for possession and power. But she has aspirations and talent for liberty, rebellion. The consciousness of the mother, my character, is raised from that rebellion," says Swinton.
