Awesome portrait of Wings of Desire, Sandy. I love that film. It made my top 100 a few years ago.
I Am Love (2009)There are some films that are so sensual that you can touch them. Please don’t misunderstand me. For so many people in our pornography culture, “sensual” means sexual or nakedness. But the meaning of “sensual” is “of the senses,” and it has the deeper meaning of stirring emotion, especially longing for an ethereal experience that is accomplished through the senses.
Movies are a sensual medium, in general. We see and hear and (if we watch with a fantastic sound system) feel the movie in the air. In the best films, we experience new things, live the lives of others whom we had never met before the beginning of the film. We see and hear through them, and so obtain a sense of their thought.
But a few films are so sensual, that I can almost use senses that aren’t actually available in a common film. I can feel the cloth, taste the prawn, caress the face, smell the forest, move my fingertips over the roughness of the bark of the tree. But more importantly, I can capture the very essence of a character’s emotions in my soul.
I would put I Am Love in that category of film. It is a short list, frankly: In the Mood for Love, about the unfulfilled longing for another. The Double Life of Veronique, about the ethereal versus the corporal life. The New World, about choosing one’s love or the one who loves you. Babette’s Feast, about an aesthetic community that experiences the joy of earth. There are, perhaps, a few others. Three Colors: Blue, The Tree of Life.
But like I Am Love, they are lush, focusing on close cinematography, drawing on nature and food in a way that stirs both the senses and the soul. These are films that expand our experience of reality, even as the finest sensual experiences do—that communicate not only the flesh, but the spirit behind the flesh.
Great performances, amazing cinematography, fantastic music-- all of which are loud and in your face. Just the way I like it.
5/5