‘It’s All About Love’ is all about the risks

“It’s All About Love,” which opens Friday, is the first futuristic love story/Hitchcockian thriller about an ice skater. And if that’s not enough, subplots dealing with heart disease, cloning and global warming are thrown in.

“It’s All About Love” stars Joaquin Phoenix as the sad-eyed John, who arrives in New York in 2021 from his native Poland so that his estranged wife, Elena (Claire Danes), an internationally famous ice skater, can sign their divorce papers. All is not perfect in New York, nor in Elena’s universe. People are dying on New York streets, while passersby quite literally walk over them. And the world is beginning to freeze over, even though it’s only July. As John tries to rekindle his relationship with Elena, he finds that her malevolent manager has cloned Elena.

Popping up throughout the film is Sean Penn as John’s older brother, who chats with his sibling on a cellphone from various plane flights while expounding on love, the weather and life.

The movie is the latest from Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg of “The Celebration” fame. Back in 1995, Vinterberg and fellow Danish director Lars Von Trier made headlines with a manifesto, Dogme 95, that called for the stripping away of the superficiality of modern filmmaking. Films would eschew high tech and instead use hand-held cameras, natural light and direct sound. The filmmakers had difficulty following their own rules.

Vinterberg, who shot “It’s All About Love” in 2003, explained his latest intent: “I have done everything I could to make ‘It’s All About Love’ a contrast to Dogme 95. ‘It’s All About Love’ is my attempt to avoid repetition, to take another artistic risk, to explore new territory.”

Vinterberg’s experiment has received decidedly mixed critical response.

Ed Gonzalez of Slant magazine.com went so far as to say that the filmmaker should return to his Dogme tradition and “never be allowed to use high-tech filmmaking techniques ever again.”

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-- Susan King