I Am Love

2010 in Review: Foreign Films

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It was another year in which foreign cinema was essential.  Three of the nominees for the 2009  Best Foreign Language Oscar were released in the US this year:  Ajami (Israel/Palestine), A Prophet (France) and the Oscar winning The Secrets in Their Eyes (Argentina).   Those three made my list of Best Movies of 2010, along with Mademoiselle Chambon, The Girl on the Train, and The Ghost Writer from France, Carlos from France/Germany, Fish Tank from the UK, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from Sweden.  If I couldn’t see foreign films, I wouldn’t have a Best Movie list.

France also gave us the Mesrine films.  Ireland offered Kisses.  Italy had the food-centric  I Am Love and Mid-August Lunch.  In a tremendous year for crime drama, the Aussies added Animal Kingdom and the Koreans contributed Mother. Police, Adjective was another bleak, cynical drama from Rumania.

Here’s the trailer for Kisses.

Food Porn

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Glazed prawns from I Am Love

I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on the recent post updating my 10 Most Memorable Food Scenes – the movie food scenes that are the most amusing, shocking, etc.  But what about the most tantalizing food movies?  They are on a completely different list:   10 Food Porn Movies.

Nobody will be surprised that I’ve included Babette’s Feast or Eat Drink Man Woman.  But I also feature four 2010 films.  Visit the 10 Food Porn Movies for the other picks, trailers, images and even a link to some recipes.

I Am Love

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I Am Love (Io sono l’amore) – the operatic tale of the family of a zillionaire Milan industrialist and how each family member seeks happiness – is less than the sum of its parts.  The movie has many successful components: another fearless performance by Tilda Swinton, searing love scenes, and some nice small touches in the screenwriting (an aristocratic family’s treatment of the new wife during a tragedy, the re-taking of a man’s suit coat, among others).  But the soundtrack’s musical crescendos at the most emotionally charged moments are too distracting, as are the over-the-top plot points in the third act.  And the character of the favorite son is written to be impossibly sweet and naive.  Marisa Berenson (whose career has been pretty quiet since 1975’s Barry Lyndon) is excellent in a small role.

There is some mouth-watering food porn (especially the glazed prawns); if this movie could generate a wider audience, the line “I made your mother prawns” would become a catch phrase, as in “I made your mother prawns and we hiked the Appalachian Trail”.

The film making is described in the New York Times.