It all started with beige. Beige in the grandiose dining room of the Recchi villa, beige in Emma’s knit sweater and khakis as she prepares for her father-in-law’s birthday dinner. When the guests arrive, Emma changes into a conservative rich purple dress of a 1940s silhouette, her hair down a la Grace Kelly. She is silent as the men are talking business and speaks only to play the part of supportive mother. The wardrobe that follows is a range of light gray-blues and whites, worn as Emma performs her daily errands.

I have adored Tilda Swinton ever since I saw Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992) – mainly because of the film’s total dependence on costumes to denote its narrative progression. In Io Sono L’amore (Luca Guadagnino, 2009), costume plays a similar role and Swinton succeeds in wearing them to enhance, not distract, her character development.

Clad exclusively in Jil Sander, Swinton plays Emma Recchi, a porcelain-clean trophy wife of an Italian textile tycoon and a loving mother of two. She spends her days picking up laundry and visiting her husband at his office. Io Sono L’amore speaks of the repression of individuality within the shackles of rituals and order.

The dialogue is minimal and the acting style is bare, but these are compensated by a rich compilation of stylistic elements. John Adams’s operatic score voices the feelings of anger and betrayal that are never properly expressed. The cinematography fluctuates between blurry and bleached out (symbolizing ecstasy) and detailed and revealing (truth). The colours are sometimes muted, sometimes incredibly vibrant. These changes highlight the stages of Swinton’s character development.

This motif is even more obvious in the mise-en-scene, revealing Emma’s true colours. Raf Simons’s sleek, minimalist silhouettes and the emptiness of the setting around her at first echo the quietness of the film. But it is unsettling how Emma’s elegant wardrobe and pale skin set her apart from the rest of the cleavage-bearing and tanned upper-crust Italians. Over the course of the film, this incongruity hints at how Emma’s lifestyle has never been an appropriate fit for her identity or character.

One afternoon Emma, dressed in a vivid blue dress, finds Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini) – her son’s friend and a talented chef – in her kitchen. (It is similar to her dinner party ensemble, the night of her first encounter with Antonio.) Their interaction reaches a higher level as they share a love for cooking. Emma’s wardrobe and character are growing bolder.

Their third encounter occurs when Emma lunches at Antonio’s family restaurant. The food arrives; a spotlight is fixed on Emma. She is distinguished from her companions, and appears to experience a deliciously orgasmic experience induced by Antonio’s dish. For this scene, Simons has coloured his grey F/W ’08 dress into a rich, vibrant red.

Emma’s desires and impulses progressively dictate her actions, paralleled by a bolder change of colours and scenery. She drives away to Sanremo in a bright orange dress and in her second visit she wears a pair of orange pants. This major palette change is extreme at first and even out of character – but it soon reveals that being a wealthy trophy wife is not part of her identity after all.

Io sono l’amore (I am Love)
Dir: Luca Guadagnino, 2009
Review by Marsya Maharini

The feeling of anticipation in a darkening movie theatre is generally universal. On this occasion I was more eager than usual. A few weeks prior I had seen a superbly edited trailer featuring a rapid succession of beautiful shots from the upcoming film, A Single Man. Being a self-proclaimed cinephile, my pulse quickened with the emotional reminders of great cinematic experiences past. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed, but not for the reasons you’d think….

A Single Man takes place in Los Angeles at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Adapted (from a Christopher Isherwood novel of the same name), directed, and produced by legendary fashion lord and first time filmmaker Tom Ford, it is a solemn tale of a man coming to grips with the painful loss of the love of his life. Colin Firth’s heart-breaking performance is touching and the stuff the best dramas are made of (and just as an aside, it was nice to see Firth challenged by a role that was not a type-cast of Jane Austen’s impenetrable Mr. Darcy).

However, the driving force of the film is the cinematography and the overall vision of Ford as auteur. Every shot from beginning to end is, without question, absolutely beautiful. It is specifically Ford’s background in fashion as a designer, photographer, and creative director that shines through; after all, he mastered the creation of perfect images in an industry where image is everything. He brings this same attention to detail to all the visual elements in the film.

From the shock of a woman’s red lipstick, and the sweat beading on men playing tennis, to the profound ugliness of make-up plastered on a woman of a certain age, this film revels in the details. I cannot help but remember one scene in particular that occurs towards the end of the film: A shot is taken from above of Firth lying on the floor. For a few seconds a pair of shiny black shoes breaches the frame. Those shoes function as a subtle emotional signifier that I am sure, in another director’s hands, would not have existed.

But by now you must be wondering, if this movie was such a thing of beauty, why was I disappointed? Well it turns out too much beauty is not a good thing; after a while, the steady march of gorgeous images just became a distraction, competing with the narrative, rather than complementing it. As one critic put it, “[It] is overbearingly aesthetic…. [You] are not able to enter the story emotionally because of the level of the aesthetic care in each scene.” In some instances that aesthetic care feels pretentious and contrived. This is also apparent in the casting of minor characters, who are so over-the-top good looking they could only be models.

As a viewer, I want to be able to relate to the people on screen. They shouldn’t be the glossy super-humans found in magazine spreads, blank canvases to be idealized and desired. Yes, this is film and, on some level, fantasy, but Ford’s perfect specimens are more akin to waxed dolls than humans. No longer simply a better looking version of real life, their aesthetic demands so much focus, the story these characters ought to be telling gets lost.

It is imperfection and spontaneity that can make a work of beauty go from good to great; too much flawlessness is boring. But if my problem with Tom Ford’s first outing as a filmmaker is that, in his naivety, he filled it to the brim with too much pretty, well, I can’t wait for his next project.

Then we’ll see if he can learn to edit his fashion mega-lord tendencies…

- Anisha Seth

Hair India presents what can arguably be called the uglier side of the beauty industry. Directed by Raffaele Brunetti and Marco Leopardi, the film shows the extreme differences between India’s richest and poorest, and the roles both play in the obtaining and selling of one of the most popular recent accessories: hair extensions.

The film follows a young girl named Gita and her family living in West Bengal. Having no other material possessions to donate to their temple, they plan on collectively shaving their heads and sacrificing their hair, a common ritual where they live. In a culture where a woman’s beauty is so highly regarded, the act of giving up one’s hair is not a simple decision. Meanwhile in Bombay we meet Sangeeta (pictured above), the editor of a gossip magazine who busies herself with such tasks like finding a professional palm reader to dish on the personal lives of major Indian celebrities. While looking for a new hairstyle before a huge party, Sangeeta turns to hair extensions.

Between following the lives of these two women, the documentary observes how the temple sells the hair to a company in Italy called Great Lengths, who then bleaches, colours, and sorts the hair and turns them into extensions, sold around the world. They are a hot commodity coveted by the rich, from celebrities in Hollywood to Sangeeta and her peers.

The film does suggest that there is an injustice being committed, but it is hard to pinpoint who exactly the culprit is. There are the temples who sell the hair without the consent of the donating parties, but if all the money goes back to charitable events, can it really be inferred that the temples have dishonourable intentions? It seemed clear that Sangeeta, the glamorous magazine editor with an obsession for celebrity culture and makeup, was seen as silly and shallow – after all, the audience at the screening I went to laughed when she said she hoped her new extensions would make her look like Shakira. Shots of Gita and her family living in near poverty accompanied by melancholic music are interspersed with scenes of Sangeeta at high profile events wearing designer dresses, yet I still find it hard to vilify her as a bad guy of Disney proportions – after all, she is a woman trying to find success in a society that, although different from our own, still places great significance on a woman’s physical beauty (as emphasized by the great pains it took for Gita to eventually donate her hair). Could it be possible that Sangeeta herself is just a different sort of victim, falling prey to a sexist and shallow culture and merely ignorant to the conditions under which the hair extensions were made?

In a post-screening interview with the filmmakers, they explained that their job in creating this documentary was not to give all the answers, but rather to ask the relevant questions. In that respect, their film was successful. Hair India does a good job of displaying the relevant information so that, even if the film doesn’t solve any problems itself, it certainly raises awareness of the issue.
- Anna Fitz

His tailor shop is below street level, in an underground strip mall, which gives Mr. Arabpour’s cramped business the appearance of only being open “late-night.” Burly men file in with their entourage, and he, elfin in comparison, reaches up to greet them with three kisses.

This is the sum of the action in Final Fitting, a portrait of the 80-year-old Arabpour, tailor to the stars of Iranian politics and religion for 58 years. Director Reza Haeri bounces back and forth from Mr. Arabpour’s reception area to his back room, where he cuts fabric and muses on everything from garment construction to his famous clientele to why one should not wear trousers to prayer (plumber’s crack!).

Mr. Arabpour has outfitted everyone from the late Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution, to popular former president Mohammad Khatami and current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. You get the impression he treated them all as he does in the film: jumping up to wrap his arms around a man’s waist, faceplanting into his belly, reading the tape, and shaking his head, muttering, “God preserve me.”

Mr. Arabpour lives the city of Qom, a holy city of the Shiite Muslims and home to one of the largest religious schools in Iran. Although a strict dress code still exists, changes to Iran’s cultural climate over the past decade can be measured by Mr. Arabpour’s creations. Theology students now wear trousers, (and some wear jeans) and there are several accoutrements, such as turbans and abbas (robes) that have adjusted to fit these modern times. Labadehs (long, sheer robes worn over one’s ensemble), for instance, have gone from having one or two pockets to nine – even ayatollahs need a place for their Blackberry.

In a mere 30 minutes, however, Final Fitting manages goes beyond the garments to reveal a delicate portrait of an old man – a man who is traditional, modest, and accepts change with the indifferent resignation of someone who’s seen it all. It leaves you feeling you’ve trespassed upon his quiet life – and for that reason alone, Final Fitting is essential viewing.

Sara Forsyth