Gotham Diary:
Foreign Movies
Ms NOLA and I went to see Io sono l’amore (I Am Love) on Friday afternoon, and the movie stuck with me overnight and well into yesterday. I’m going to have to see it a few more times before I can speak intelligently about it, because it’s a High Italian work of art. By that I mean that its style is that of big, painterly canvases. It is not quite the glossy spectacular that the trailer and the news images suggested, but it is as distinctly and pervasively styled as a movie by, say, David Lynch.
It reminded me of the big mid-century Italian classics, by Visconti, Pasolini, and even Antonioni. Like an early Antonioni movie — Le amiche, say — the story was intelligible enough without being altogether straightforward. There was none of the grand mystification of the wonderful Monica Vitti movies — mystification that, if we’re honest, looks a lot like psychopathology now. (Shouldn’t she be on medication?) I was telling Ms NOLA about L’Eclisse; about how fascinated I was, watching the film for the first time in college, by the existential malaise of the breaking-up lovers at the start of the movie. They’re in perfect health, and they don’t have any money worries, and yet they’re wretched. I was green with envy! I wouldn’t have minded being wretched as I was, as an undergraduate, if only I could have been spared my fiscal woes (my allowance was never remotely adequate — I had a library to build!) and my anxieties about classes (which I more than once failed simply by not showing up for the exam). I accepted being a mess; L’Eclisse showed me that it was possible to be a very stylish mess. This is also a lesson of I Am Love. Â
In the event, however, I stopped being a mess when I stopped having to worry about money and grades. I have no aptitude for angst. Not hearing from Kathleen when she’s traveling can send me to the inner circles of hell, but the agony vanishes without a trace the moment I hear her ring. And I no longer allow worries to fester. If something’s bothering me, I do what I can do to make it stop. This usually involves placing a call to Kathleen. (I need a new dentist, though.)
Luca Guadagnino, the writer/director of I Am Love, really knows what he’s doing. I’ve rarely tasted the irony-infused satisfaction that was sparked by watching an unwitting footman carry dishes of fish soup to a dinner table, knowing as I did that the principal ingredient of the broth was Disaster, and that it wouldn’t even have to be tasted to work its poison. Really, the moment was right up there with Dante and Boccaccio. Â