I Am Love (film)
Encyclopedia
I Am Love is a 2009 Italian film directed by Luca Guadagnino
set around 2000 in Milan
. The film follows a haute bourgeoisie
family through changing times and fortunes, and its disruption by the force of passion. The cast is led by Tilda Swinton
as Emma Recchi. Co-producers Swinton and Guadagnino developed the film together over an 11-year period.
The film premiered in the United States at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival
, and premiered in both the Venice Film Festival
and the Toronto Film Festival.
The title is taken from a line from the aria La mamma morta
, which is explored in the film Philadelphia
(starring Tom Hanks
and Denzel Washington
), a scene of which Emma is watching while in bed with her husband, during the film. The film's soundtrack uses pre-existing compositions by John Adams.
manufacturers in Milan. The story of the family's decline develops via subtle means, starting with the opening credits, which show Milan covered in snow. The first cracks in the family facade appear in the first scene, a formal dinner party arranged by Tancredi Recchi (Pippo Delbono) and his elegant wife Emma (Swinton) for Tancredi's still-formidable but ailing father, Edoardo Sr. (Gabriele Ferzetti), patriarch and founder of the family business, who is celebrating what is clearly his last birthday. As the many servants bustle about, the family are somewhat taken aback by the news that Tancredi and Emma's eldest son, Edoardo Jr. (Flavio Parenti), has lost a race that very day. The Recchis are not accustomed to losing anything. The second tiny "crack" appears when Tancredi and Emma's daughter Elisabetta (Alba Rohrwacher) presents her grandfather with one of her artworks - only it's a photograph rather than a painting, as in the past. The formidable patriarch is disappointed by this lesser offering, but encouraged by his glamorous wife Allegra "Rori" Recchi (Marisa Berenson), he makes a weak stab at glossing it over.
Edoardo Jr. arrives from his lost race accompanied by his girlfriend, Eva, of the prominent Ugolini family, who he apparently plans to marry. Edoardo's young adult siblings, Gianluca (Mattia Zaccaro) and Elisabetta, complain of yet again being served "ukha," Edoardo's favorite dish - a special soup his mother Emma, who is Russian by birth, made for him in childhood. We hear bits of Russian spoken. During the meal, the grandfather announces he is passing the family business to his son, Tancredi, who has long worked with him, and also, unexpectedly, to Edoardo Jr.
During the evening, Emma withdraws from the family circle to her own room. She is clearly restless. Her sons are grown, and Elisabetta is off studying art in London
. Later, Emma discovers that Elisabetta is a lesbian
- another small crack in the facade - but keeps this a secret from her husband, with whom she appears to have somewhat distant relations.
Later during the birthday dinner, Edoardo Jr. receives a surprise visit from Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), the chef who defeated him in the race earlier that day. Antonio brings a beautiful cake as a gift, and Edoardo, flattered by the gesture, introduces him to his mother. Emma and Antonio are possibly subtly attracted to each other, but it is Edoardo who makes plans with Antonio to open a restaurant together on some property Antonio owns in the hilly countryside. Some days later, when Edoardo visits Antonio at this site, there are indications that the two young men may be engaged in a homosexual affair.
Months pass. Emma is having dinner at Antonio's restaurant, and her attraction is stoked while eating a prawn dish he prepares for her. She takes a trip to Nice and stops in San Remo
where she knows she may encounter Antonio. She does spot him, follows him, has a "chance encounter," then goes with him to his house in the hills above the city, and their affair begins.
Meanwhile, in London, Edoardo Jr. struggles as his father and other family members seek to sell the family business to foreign investors. The family will be "richer than ever," as Elisabetta says contemptuously, but this sale, along with the death of the patriarch, is yet another sign that the heart has gone out of the family.
On her second trip to San Remo, under the pretext of discussing a menu for the formal dinner she will host for the foreign investors who are buying the Recchi family business, Emma spends the day with Antonio, and the two enjoy passionate lovemaking. Emma tells Antonio how Tancredi met her during a trip to Russia, hunting art treasures, and we get the impression Emma feels she has been just one more decorative object in Tancredi's collection. Antonio cuts Emma's blonde hair, a long lock of which falls unnoticed to the terrace, where Edoardo Jr. finds it during his own subsequent visit, but does not (yet) realize its true significance.
On the night of the dinner for the investors at the Recchi villa, ensconced below stairs in the kitchen, Antonio prepares "ukha" - whose preparation Emma has described to Antonio during one of their intimate moments. It is fraught with significance - the dish Emma used to make for Edoardo Jr. as a child, the outward sign of the mother-son bond. When the servers place this soup before him, Edoardo, recalling the lock of blonde hair, instantly realizes his mother is having an affair with Antonio. He leaves the dinner table in a fury. Emma follows him outside to the swimming pool and tries to talk to him, but in pulling away from her outstretched hand he loses his balance, falls, strikes his head on the sharp concrete edge, sustains a cerebral hemorrhage, and dies.
After the funeral, Tancredi tries to console Emma, but she tells him that she is in love with Antonio. Tancredi is incensed. Emma rushes back to her villa, changes her dress and leaves. Her housekeeper is distraught. Before she leaves, she exchanges a knowing glance with her daughter, who it appears understands her mother's desire to follow her heart. Meanwhile, Edoardo Jr.'s fiancee Eva, who is pregnant, clutches her abdomen as she enters the entryway with the shocked family members; she is having a miscarriage. During the final credits, Emma and Antonio are seen lying together inside a cave.
designed by architect Piero Portaluppi. Tilda Swinton states in the DVD commentary to the movie that the villa was perfect because they were looking for a house “that was part palace, part museum, and part prison.” The funeral and the subsequent scene were filmed in the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano
.
The food and meals in the movie were inspired by the cuisine of Carlo Cracco, the owner of the legendary Cracco Peck
restaurant in Milan.
reports that 82% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 110 reviews, with an average score of 7.2/10. The critical consensus is: "It stumbles into melodrama, but I Am Love backs up its flamboyance with tremendous visual style and a marvelous central performance from Tilda Swinton." Another review aggregator, Metacritic
, which assigns a weighted average
score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a "generally favorable" score of 79 based on 32 reviews. Roger Ebert
of Chicago Sun-Times
gave the film four out of four stars, praising Swinton's performance and saying "I Am Love is an amazing film. It is deep, rich, human. It is not about rich and poor, but about old and new. It is about the ancient war between tradition and feeling." The Washington Post
s Ann Hornaday said the film was "carefully composed and framed, gorgeously appointed, superbly choreographed and accompanied by a thrilling musical score, it would no doubt provide rewarding fodder for critics of art, design, fashion, dance and music." Peter Bradshaw
of The Guardian
gave the film three out of five stars, saying "It's a high-IQ picture – there are few enough of those – and it's fascinating, if a little bloodless. A gorgeously costumed and styled piece of work."
Margaret Pomeranz
of At the Movies gave the film four and a half out of five stars and said "This is a beautiful film, moving, stylish with a sensual romance at its heart." Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times
praised Swinton's performance, saying "Swinton is one of the finest actresses working in contemporary cinema, but Guadagnino, who developed the project with her in mind, has created a film that literally luxuriates in her talents." Empire
s Damon Wise gave the film four out of five stars and said "Though it drags a little, this stately film never descends into formula, using John Adams' score to great effect and boldly utilising the flourishes of '70s Italian genre cinema (zooms, handheld camera) to create something original, refreshing and really very moving."
Lisa Schwarzbaum
of Entertainment Weekly
gave the film a grade of "C+", saying "O sexytime in the countryside! O many wardrobe changes! The film is almost deliriously stylish, which helps mask the silliness. But the bellowing music, by John Adams, is infuriatingly intrusive — which undoes the visual good." Mark Demetrius of Filmink gave the film a negative review, stating "Despite an elegant and impressive visual style, the narrative of this slow-paced film is uninteresting and full of cliché." New York Film Critics Online
called the work the Best Foreign Film of 2010. Quentin Tarantino
listed it as one of his favorite 20 films of 2010.
The film was nominated at the 68th Golden Globe Awards
for Best Foreign Film
, however, it lost to Denmark
's In a Better World
. Costume designer Antonella Cannarozzi
was nominated on January 5, 2011, for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for her work in the film, however she lost to Colleen Atwood for Alice in Wonderland
.
Luca Guadagnino
Luca Guadagnino is an Italian film director. He rose to notability with the 2005 film Melissa P., and he is a frequent collaborator with Tilda Swinton, including the 2010 film I Am Love.-Life and career:...
set around 2000 in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
. The film follows a haute bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
family through changing times and fortunes, and its disruption by the force of passion. The cast is led by Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton
Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
as Emma Recchi. Co-producers Swinton and Guadagnino developed the film together over an 11-year period.
The film premiered in the United States at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
, and premiered in both the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
and the Toronto Film Festival.
The title is taken from a line from the aria La mamma morta
La mamma morta
"La mamma morta" is an aria of the 1896 opera Andrea Chénier by Umberto Giordano, sung by the role of Maddalena di Coigny...
, which is explored in the film Philadelphia
Philadelphia (film)
Philadelphia is a 1993 American drama film that was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality and homophobia. It was written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Jonathan Demme. The film stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington...
(starring Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
and Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He first rose to prominence when he joined the cast of the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, playing Dr...
), a scene of which Emma is watching while in bed with her husband, during the film. The film's soundtrack uses pre-existing compositions by John Adams.
Plot summary
The wealthy Recchi family are first and second-generation textileTextile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...
manufacturers in Milan. The story of the family's decline develops via subtle means, starting with the opening credits, which show Milan covered in snow. The first cracks in the family facade appear in the first scene, a formal dinner party arranged by Tancredi Recchi (Pippo Delbono) and his elegant wife Emma (Swinton) for Tancredi's still-formidable but ailing father, Edoardo Sr. (Gabriele Ferzetti), patriarch and founder of the family business, who is celebrating what is clearly his last birthday. As the many servants bustle about, the family are somewhat taken aback by the news that Tancredi and Emma's eldest son, Edoardo Jr. (Flavio Parenti), has lost a race that very day. The Recchis are not accustomed to losing anything. The second tiny "crack" appears when Tancredi and Emma's daughter Elisabetta (Alba Rohrwacher) presents her grandfather with one of her artworks - only it's a photograph rather than a painting, as in the past. The formidable patriarch is disappointed by this lesser offering, but encouraged by his glamorous wife Allegra "Rori" Recchi (Marisa Berenson), he makes a weak stab at glossing it over.
Edoardo Jr. arrives from his lost race accompanied by his girlfriend, Eva, of the prominent Ugolini family, who he apparently plans to marry. Edoardo's young adult siblings, Gianluca (Mattia Zaccaro) and Elisabetta, complain of yet again being served "ukha," Edoardo's favorite dish - a special soup his mother Emma, who is Russian by birth, made for him in childhood. We hear bits of Russian spoken. During the meal, the grandfather announces he is passing the family business to his son, Tancredi, who has long worked with him, and also, unexpectedly, to Edoardo Jr.
During the evening, Emma withdraws from the family circle to her own room. She is clearly restless. Her sons are grown, and Elisabetta is off studying art in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Later, Emma discovers that Elisabetta is a lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
- another small crack in the facade - but keeps this a secret from her husband, with whom she appears to have somewhat distant relations.
Later during the birthday dinner, Edoardo Jr. receives a surprise visit from Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), the chef who defeated him in the race earlier that day. Antonio brings a beautiful cake as a gift, and Edoardo, flattered by the gesture, introduces him to his mother. Emma and Antonio are possibly subtly attracted to each other, but it is Edoardo who makes plans with Antonio to open a restaurant together on some property Antonio owns in the hilly countryside. Some days later, when Edoardo visits Antonio at this site, there are indications that the two young men may be engaged in a homosexual affair.
Months pass. Emma is having dinner at Antonio's restaurant, and her attraction is stoked while eating a prawn dish he prepares for her. She takes a trip to Nice and stops in San Remo
Sanremo
Sanremo or San Remo is a city with about 57,000 inhabitants on the Mediterranean coast of western Liguria in north-western Italy. Founded in Roman times, the city is best known as a tourist destination on the Italian Riviera. It hosts numerous cultural events, such as the Sanremo Music Festival...
where she knows she may encounter Antonio. She does spot him, follows him, has a "chance encounter," then goes with him to his house in the hills above the city, and their affair begins.
Meanwhile, in London, Edoardo Jr. struggles as his father and other family members seek to sell the family business to foreign investors. The family will be "richer than ever," as Elisabetta says contemptuously, but this sale, along with the death of the patriarch, is yet another sign that the heart has gone out of the family.
On her second trip to San Remo, under the pretext of discussing a menu for the formal dinner she will host for the foreign investors who are buying the Recchi family business, Emma spends the day with Antonio, and the two enjoy passionate lovemaking. Emma tells Antonio how Tancredi met her during a trip to Russia, hunting art treasures, and we get the impression Emma feels she has been just one more decorative object in Tancredi's collection. Antonio cuts Emma's blonde hair, a long lock of which falls unnoticed to the terrace, where Edoardo Jr. finds it during his own subsequent visit, but does not (yet) realize its true significance.
On the night of the dinner for the investors at the Recchi villa, ensconced below stairs in the kitchen, Antonio prepares "ukha" - whose preparation Emma has described to Antonio during one of their intimate moments. It is fraught with significance - the dish Emma used to make for Edoardo Jr. as a child, the outward sign of the mother-son bond. When the servers place this soup before him, Edoardo, recalling the lock of blonde hair, instantly realizes his mother is having an affair with Antonio. He leaves the dinner table in a fury. Emma follows him outside to the swimming pool and tries to talk to him, but in pulling away from her outstretched hand he loses his balance, falls, strikes his head on the sharp concrete edge, sustains a cerebral hemorrhage, and dies.
After the funeral, Tancredi tries to console Emma, but she tells him that she is in love with Antonio. Tancredi is incensed. Emma rushes back to her villa, changes her dress and leaves. Her housekeeper is distraught. Before she leaves, she exchanges a knowing glance with her daughter, who it appears understands her mother's desire to follow her heart. Meanwhile, Edoardo Jr.'s fiancee Eva, who is pregnant, clutches her abdomen as she enters the entryway with the shocked family members; she is having a miscarriage. During the final credits, Emma and Antonio are seen lying together inside a cave.
Production
Many of the scenes were shot in Villa Necchi Campiglio, a 1930s mansion in the heart of MilanMilan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
designed by architect Piero Portaluppi. Tilda Swinton states in the DVD commentary to the movie that the villa was perfect because they were looking for a house “that was part palace, part museum, and part prison.” The funeral and the subsequent scene were filmed in the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano
Cimitero Monumentale di Milano
The Cimitero Monumentale in Milan, Italy is a very large cemetery, noted for its abundance of highly artistic and often imposing tombs.It was designed by the architect Carlo Maciachini...
.
The food and meals in the movie were inspired by the cuisine of Carlo Cracco, the owner of the legendary Cracco Peck
Cracco Peck
Cracco Peck is a restaurant in Milan, Italy. The chef is Carlo Cracco.The chef Carlo Cracco is regarded as many as the supreme exponent of Italian Cuisine. His roots are in classic Italian cuisine....
restaurant in Milan.
Cast
- Tilda SwintonTilda SwintonKatherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
as Emma Recchi - Flavio Parenti as Edoardo Recchi Jr.
- Edoardo Gabbriellini as Antonio Biscaglia
- Alba RohrwacherAlba RohrwacherAlba Caterina Rohrwacher is an Italian actress.Alba Rohrwacher was born in Florence, the daughter of a German father and an Italian mother. She studied acting at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. Her first movie role was in 2004 in L'amore ritrovato. In 2008 she was awarded the...
as Elisabetta Recchi - Pippo Delbono as Tancredi Recchi
- Maria Paiato as Ida Roselli
- Diane Fleri as Eva Ugolini
- Waris AhluwaliaWaris AhluwaliaWaris Ahluwalia |Punjab]], India, c. 1975) is an Indian-American jewelry designer and actor. He immigrated with his family to the United States at the age of five, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He is based in New York City but has also lived in Los Angeles and travels frequently to Rome,...
as Shai Kubelkian - Marisa BerensonMarisa BerensonVittoria Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson is an American actress and model.-Early life:She is the elder daughter of Robert L. Berenson, an American diplomat turned shipping executive, who was of Lithuanian Jewish descent; his family's original surname was Valvrojenski...
as Allegra Recchi - Gabriele FerzettiGabriele FerzettiGabriele Ferzetti is an Italian actor. He has more than 160 credits to his name across film, television and stage. His career was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s....
as Edoardo Recchi Sr.
Critical response
I Am Love was met with generally positive reviews. Review aggregate Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reports that 82% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 110 reviews, with an average score of 7.2/10. The critical consensus is: "It stumbles into melodrama, but I Am Love backs up its flamboyance with tremendous visual style and a marvelous central performance from Tilda Swinton." Another review aggregator, Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a weighted average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a "generally favorable" score of 79 based on 32 reviews. Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
of Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
gave the film four out of four stars, praising Swinton's performance and saying "I Am Love is an amazing film. It is deep, rich, human. It is not about rich and poor, but about old and new. It is about the ancient war between tradition and feeling." The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
s Ann Hornaday said the film was "carefully composed and framed, gorgeously appointed, superbly choreographed and accompanied by a thrilling musical score, it would no doubt provide rewarding fodder for critics of art, design, fashion, dance and music." Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw is a British writer and film critic. He was educated at Cambridge University, where he was President of Footlights.Bradshaw is a film critic for The Guardian...
of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
gave the film three out of five stars, saying "It's a high-IQ picture – there are few enough of those – and it's fascinating, if a little bloodless. A gorgeously costumed and styled piece of work."
Margaret Pomeranz
Margaret Pomeranz
Margaret Pomeranz AM is an Australian film critic and television personality.-Early life:Pomeranz was born in 1944 in Waverley, a suburb of Sydney, and was educated at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney in Croydon, the then newly opened Macquarie University, and the Playwright's Studio at...
of At the Movies gave the film four and a half out of five stars and said "This is a beautiful film, moving, stylish with a sensual romance at its heart." Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
praised Swinton's performance, saying "Swinton is one of the finest actresses working in contemporary cinema, but Guadagnino, who developed the project with her in mind, has created a film that literally luxuriates in her talents." Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
s Damon Wise gave the film four out of five stars and said "Though it drags a little, this stately film never descends into formula, using John Adams' score to great effect and boldly utilising the flourishes of '70s Italian genre cinema (zooms, handheld camera) to create something original, refreshing and really very moving."
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum is an American film critic. She joined Entertainment Weekly as film critic in the 1990s. She has been featured on CNN, co-host on Siskel & Ebert At the Movies as well as a cultural, theater and television reviewer....
of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
gave the film a grade of "C+", saying "O sexytime in the countryside! O many wardrobe changes! The film is almost deliriously stylish, which helps mask the silliness. But the bellowing music, by John Adams, is infuriatingly intrusive — which undoes the visual good." Mark Demetrius of Filmink gave the film a negative review, stating "Despite an elegant and impressive visual style, the narrative of this slow-paced film is uninteresting and full of cliché." New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Online
The New York Film Critics Online is an organization composed of Internet film critics based in New York City. The group meets once a year, in December, for voting on its annual NYFCO Awards.-Awards:*New York Film Critics Online Awards 2003...
called the work the Best Foreign Film of 2010. Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
listed it as one of his favorite 20 films of 2010.
The film was nominated at the 68th Golden Globe Awards
68th Golden Globe Awards
The 68th Golden Globe Awards was broadcast live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on January 16, 2011, by NBC. The host was Ricky Gervais....
for Best Foreign Film
Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the awards presented at the Golden Globes, an American film awards ceremony.Until 1986, it was known as the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film, meaning that any non-American film could be honoured...
, however, it lost to Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
's In a Better World
In a Better World
In a Better World is a 2010 Danish-Swedish drama thriller film written by Anders Thomas Jensen and directed by Susanne Bier. The film stars Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, and Ulrich Thomsen in a story which takes place in small-town Denmark and a refugee camp in Africa.A Danish majority...
. Costume designer Antonella Cannarozzi
Antonella Cannarozzi
Antonella Cannarozzi is an Italian costume designer who was nominated for her first Academy Award for I Am Love .- Film credits :* The Solitude of Prime Numbers * Diarchy * I Am Love...
was nominated on January 5, 2011, for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for her work in the film, however she lost to Colleen Atwood for Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland (2010 film)
Alice in Wonderland is a 2010 American computer-animated/live action fantasy adventure film directed by Tim Burton, written by Linda Woolverton, and released by Walt Disney Pictures...
.