Very rarely a film will break out from the fringes of the medium, from the rarified world of cineaste festivals and art house screenings into a broader mainstream consciousness and, through a series of mesmeric flourishes, transcendent jolts, diaphanously nuanced performances or the sheer scope of its artistic ambition will reaffirm the power of cinema to conjure magnificent and unique acts of arousal and awakening. As 2009 tipped into 2010 films such as Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, Michael Haneke’s White Ribbon, Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and Clare Dennis’s 35 Shots of Rum created an exceptional and rich seam of brilliance confirming that a small part of the British cinema-going public does indeed have an appetite for more than teenage vampires, boy wizards and CGI simulations. These films broke no records – today’s myopic benchmark for success. They may even have barely registered inside the monolithic Cineplex’s of middle England. But they did scramble determinedly out from the cracks to whisper quietly that a thrilling brand of originality, fuelled not by bottom lines, cross-pollinated teenage talent or ancillary merchandising but by the fertile imagination of a few passionate and committed visionaries, is alive and kicking.

Luca Guadagnino’s elliptical I Am Love (Io sono l’amore), produced by, and starring, the superlative and singular Tilda Swinton, is not a flawless film but it is so wondrously majestic, so enthralling and charismatic that to resist it, to deliberately seek out fault, feels almost barbarian. It is melodramatic, for sure, and accusations of visual histrionics, even self-indulgence, will surely be plentiful, but this is a melodrama, a sweeping dynastic saga of inter-generational conflict, of a struggle for power and an exploration of politics and of female sexual discovery and emancipation. It is baroque filmmaking based on heightened emotion, a deep sensuality and an overt theatricality that makes no excuses for its grand and ravishing ambition. Guadagnino peppers the film with discreet, understated moments that counter the sumptuousness and work beautifully in their own right, creating something a visual dialogue that slots perfectly into the pace of the narrative, but this is a film that wears its style and splendor proudly. It is grand, operatic and studied in the manner of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (Il Gattopardo, 1963) and far from flaunting unanchored visual trickery it weaves its impressive aesthetic identity firmly into the central narrative and its several intriguing offshoots.

That storyline, of a wealthy Milanese patriarch subverting the established family lineage, preferring to share his empire between his son, Tancredi, and a favored grandson, Edo, rather than his son alone, is, respectfully, a familiar Shakespearian one. However, around this central act other more absorbing tales emerge, counterpointing that drama and providing both Guadagnino and, in turn, the audience with the opportunity to explore more personal, delicate themes. Not least of these is the sexual re-awakening of Swinton’s character, Tancredi’s wife, the Russian Emma, in the arms of her son’s handsome friend, a humble chef, Antonio. Having abandoned her Eastern past, in favour of her frigid, privileged and caged present, in this secret romance she rediscovers something of herself, something more personal and rewarding and embarks on a journey, both literal and metaphorical, with her lover. Alongside her daughter Elisabetta’s revelation that she is a lesbian (a repressed secret within such conservative circles) and some grave ethical dilemmas faced by her son in the management of his grandfather’s business, both private and broader social moral issues are addressed seriously, and with elegance.

With a spectacular, commanding score by John Adams that is so entwined with the unfurling drama as to become inseparable, I Am Love is a film of grand and breathtaking risks that deserves to be seen by a far wider audience than it will inevitably reach. It is unmistakably and resolutely European and succeeds in being simultaneously both classical and contemporary, meshing the high drama of the past with the bold, sometimes intimate experimentalism of the present. It is fascinated by the human emotions that play out on both the largest and smallest of stages and brings these to life with a distinguished poeticism and confidence of style that is utterly exceptional in cinema today. I urge you to seek it out, to embrace it and simply to take pleasure in Guadagnino and Swinton’s brave, arresting vision.