What a difference a Swinton makes---Tilda, that is. This summer, the wide-ranging Oscar winner appeared in the arty I Am Love, turning a fairly ridiculous hot-mom premise into a tour de force. Come Undone, another infidelity melodrama, has the misfortune of following I Am Love. It, too, is shot in Milan and other gorgeous locales, involves a swarthy chef (Favino, Italy's homegrown George Clooney) and features the efforts of Alba Rohrwacher, who played Swinton's daughter in the earlier movie. Now she's been promoted to the role of central cheater, Anna.
What a difference a Swinton makes---Tilda, that is. This summer, the wide-ranging Oscar winner appeared in the arty I Am Love, turning a fairly ridiculous hot-mom premise into a tour de force. Come Undone, another infidelity melodrama, has the misfortune of following I Am Love. It, too, is shot in Milan and other gorgeous locales, involves a swarthy chef (Favino, Italy's homegrown George Clooney) and features the efforts of Alba Rohrwacher, who played Swinton's daughter in the earlier movie. Now she's been promoted to the role of central cheater, Anna.
Here, though, is where productive comparisons end: From its title on, Come Undone is as dully generic as is imaginable. You ache to think that Europeans could be responsible for such mundanity. Dutiful chubby-hubby Alessio (Battiston) shops at Ikea, handily fixes the shower door and rocks the couch like nobody's business, offering to pause the movie when Anna gets up for secret calls from her paramour. You grow tired of waiting for their confrontation; all the performances are so underheated that even the expected I-need-you fights feel halfhearted. Someone also thought it was a good idea to pepper the film with a few more sex scenes than usual. They give illicit thrusting a bad name.