Flickering Sound Waves

Have you seen I Am Love yet? The Globe nominee is available for rental so get on that.

Director Luca Guadagnino with Marisa Berenson & Tilda Swinton

I read the following quote over at Hollywood Reporter and I found it both amusing, right-on and the kind of thing you shouldn't say out loud. Seems Luca Guadagnino, the man behind the brilliant Globe & BFCA nominated I Am Love is not happy with the treatment of his film back home in Italy. They chose another film for their entry in the annual Oscar Foreign Film race.

He says...

Italy has been a sort of strangely cruel mother to the film. I feel like Rapunzel in Tangled. They didn’t pick the film for the Oscars. I don’t think the movie is the kind that sells in Italy now, which is basically dramedies about men that are not able to grow up. Vitteloni syndrome without Fellini. This [Golden] Globe nomination is a sort of really strong warning for the Italian culture. Beware! When you don’t support what’s good ... then the image of your country goes down and down and down. They chose another movie, instead of one that was internationally well received, particularly in the U.S. But it’s all right. Right now the moment is cheer, and I’m very cheerful. It’s a great day!

Points for honesty but obviously someone's feelings got hurt along the way.


For what it's worth, I recently spent time with the actual Italian Oscar submission La Prima Cosa Bella (The First Beautiful Thing) and it was good. It's a somewhat absorbing memoir story (half of it being in flashbacks) about the grown children of a dying but still ridiculously vibrant woman (Micaela Ramazzotti in youth / Stefani Sandrelli in old age) who was once a wild flighty gorgeous young thing dragging her wee children from home to home and sometimes to homelessness while falling in and out of love with their father (and other men).

You can trace the damage done in the generally strong performances and the film definitely gathers some cumulative emotional steam (the climactic act is entertaining, funny and unexpectedly endearing), but it's stretched a little thinly across numerous life episodes. And even though you "get" him, you do wish the sour grown man at its center would grow up a little bit.  B


I enjoyed it. But no, it's not a patch on I Am Love. Since Luca brought up Tangled, let's get our hair did in Italy.

The First Beautiful Thing has follicular drama of all varieties from deliciously lustrous (Micaela Ramazotti) to balding to sickbed wigs to plainly pretty to unruly to generic ... the hair, like the movie, has plentiful ups and downs.

I Am Love, on the other hand has magic locks just like Rapunzel's. Everyone's hair is epically beautiful; their golden, red, brown and pure white crowns (even the oldest characters have thick headfulls) are enough to make your arm hairs stand on end.


If there were an Oscar for hairstyling...