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Tilda Swinton is one of those odd birds whose appearance isn't exactly chameleon-like, but her acting is. In I Am Love, she plays a Russian woman who lives in Italy and (according to reviews) pronounces her Italian with a Russian accent. Her character, Emma, has married into an affluent Italian textiles family. Her time seems to be spent taking an interest in the lives of her grown children and husband and coordinating the events of her household with the help of her faithful maid. Once the events are in full swing, she retreats to a quiet room upstairs.

The film is filled with acute attention to the lavish fineries of her household. Most of these fineries clashed with my own personal tastes, so I suppose where I should have admired these things, I was thinking, "Wait - what era is this? Why would someone decorate their house that way nowadays?" Yes, I do admit that sometimes details like this keep me from focusing on deeper meanings within films. But, just as the family's tastes are far from subtle, so are the movie's themes.

Emma has married into this family but seems like a visitor among them. Actually, the decor itself represents her detachment from her own home, because later on we discover her love of a simpler life. In fact, almost nothing of her life seems to reflect who she is or what she is about; even her name was given to her by her husband when she came from Russia to Italy.

Emma's son Edoardo befriends a chef named Antonio and wants to open a restaurant with him. Emma has lunch at Antonio's restaurant to sample his food. To say she loves it is an understatement, because the scene was, um, climactic in nature, and serves as a fork in the road for Emma, who chooses to awaken from her coma.

For a long while, I was on board with I Am Love, ready to go where it took me. But Emma's fork in the road served as one for me too. Stylistically, I couldn't just roll with the somewhat frenetic injections of handheld camera work and closeups - particularly in the countryside scenes. Perhaps they are reflective of Emma's own heart, but I felt like there were so many styles going on that it all felt a bit pretentious, especially when combined with the highly dramatic score (which was great on its own).

Related to this second act, I am still trying to get my head around Antonio's connection with Emma. Certainly, anyone with any amount of passion could have encountered Emma at the right moment and probably sprung her from her self-imposed cell, but what's in it for Antonio, really, besides a great recipe for ukha?

When all is said and done, there is much I appreciate about I Am Love, but it's just so full of style that I felt like it flooded, and as soon as I had a second to appreciate its dramatic stop, I wanted to get away from the theater. I saw it on the same day as Winter's Bone, so I'm sure the contrast affected my opinion, but I am pretty sure that if I had seen both films a week apart, I would probably still be recommending Winter's Bone to everyone.