Call Me By Your Name

Call Me By Your Name, directed by Luca Guadagnino, is a sensual and transcendent tale of first love, based on the acclaimed novel by André Aciman, with a screenplay by James Ivory.  It’s the summer of 1983 in the north of Italy, and Elio Perlman (Chalamet), a precocious 17- year-old American-Italian, spends his days in his family’s 17th century villa transcribing and playing classical music, reading, and flirting with his friend Marzia (Esther Garrel).  Elio enjoys a close relationship with his father (Michael Stuhlbarg), an eminent professor specializing in Greco-Roman culture, and his mother Annella (Amira Casar), a translator, who favour him with the fruits of high culture in a setting that overflows with natural delights.  While Elio’s sophistication and intellectual gifts suggest he is already a fully-fledged adult, there is much that yet remains innocent and unformed about him, particularly about matters of the heart.  One day, Oliver (Hammer), a charming American scholar working on his doctorate, arrives as the annual summer intern tasked with helping Elio’s father.  Amid the sun-drenched splendor of the setting, Elio and Oliver discover the heady beauty of awakening desire over the course of a summer that will alter their lives forever.

Balancing the objectification of its leading men with discretion and delicacy, this is a film that acknowledges the purity and sculptural beauty of youth — Greek aesthetics, philosophy and ideals of male friendship are invoked early and often — but never at the expense of a character who, on the cusp of manhood, possesses his own agency and desires, despite their sometimes shaky parameters.  Portrayed with a note-perfect combination of cocky self-assurance and wary naiveté by Chalamet, Elio is something of an extension of the actor’s hilariously pretentious character in another acclaimed recent film, Lady Bird — another teenager with pedantic ideas about his own depth and seriousness.  But while Ivory and Guadanigno aren’t afraid to wink at Elio’s youthful lack of self-awareness, they never stoop to ridiculing it.  Like Oliver, whose own seeming shallowness masks a surprisingly observant, compassionate nature, they’re patient and indulgent with a stage of life that can seem laughable, enviable and excruciatingly painful all at the same time.