Director Luca Guadagnino and actress Tilda Swinton rush headlong into the crumbling empire that is classical melodrama
The Recchis are Milanese royalty. Wealthy and cultivated, their successful furniture business supports a luxurious lifestyle that is both rarified and uncontested. However cracks begin to appear in the walls of the magnificent family edifice at the birthday party of the grand-patriarch, a catalyst event for an unfolding series of startling transgressions.
Swinton is magnificent in the central role as the wife, mother and outsider (in this cloistered world her Russian heritage prevents her from truly belonging) whose carefully maintained order is undone by the unexpected wakening of desire.