A beautifully evoked, lusciously rendered story of a young
man’s first true romance and of his coming of age sexually, emotionally and
otherwise, Call Me By Your Name is an elegant, winsome movie, by Italian
director Luca Guadagnino [I Am Love
(2010), A Bigger Splash (2015)], with
an intelligent, intimate screenplay by James Ivory [A Room With A View (1985), Howard’s
End (1992)]. It is based on Andre Aciman’s heralded novel by the same name,
published in 2007, which took the form of a man’s recollection or reminiscence
from twenty years on of a particularly formative experience of his youth. The
movie does not adopt the first-person perspective per se, but retains the feel and subjectivity of a
remembrance.
It’s the summer of 1983. The boy is Elio (Timothée
Chalamet, also featured in this season’s critically praised Lady Bird), a precocious
seventeen-year-old child in an accomplished, rather international family –
American father (Michael Stuhlgard), British-Italian mother (Amira Cazar) –
summering at their family estate in bucolic Northern Italy. It is a warm, lush
place abounding with beautiful, friendly people and gorgeous natural scenery. A
nice place to film a love story and a perfect place to fall in love.
Professor Perlman, Elio’s father, is a historian of
classical art, who hosts a young assistant every summer; and this year it’s an American graduate student named Oliver, played by Armie Hammer [ The Man From Uncle (2015), Nocturnal Animals (2016)]. Oliver is
bright, charming, easygoing in a very American manner, and very, very beautiful.
Yes, even an old heterosexual male like me cannot help but notice how hunky and
gorgeous this guy is. The ladies in the movie certainly notice. And so too does Elio. Although there’s
something like a ten-year age difference between them, he and Oliver strike up
a friendship. Then it turns into something else – something very hot and very
special.
One of the cool things about Call Me By Your Name is
the way that it treats Elio’s attraction to Oliver (and vice versa) as a
completely natural thing - not something shameful, tawdry, or particularly
unusual. None of the principal characters explicitly or implicitly suggests otherwise
– not even Elio’s parents. Even so, it’s 1983 and Oliver and Elio understand that
in the little Italian village nearby many folks would be disapproving of an
openly gay relationship – so they carefully avoid public kissing, hand-holding
or other displays of affection (an acknowledgement of religious and cultural
attitudes – not legal ones. Same-sex sexual practices have been legal
throughout Italy since the late 19th century).
The film is neither lascivious nor polemical. It’s just a fine
rendering of a traditional love story, about a special moment of sexual
awakening and the twining of two souls. While
it does not shy away from depicting the physical nature of the resulting
relationship, it does this much like any film about heterosexual love would
these days – there’s skin, there’s touching and intimacy of the R-rated variety,
not NC-17 or pornographic.
What is unusual, in my experience anyway, is that the film
is about a boy’s sexual awakening. More
films than I can count have been advertised on the theme of a female’s sexual
awakening - no doubt appealing to the
prurient interest of male producers or directors who presume the public (or at
least teen boys and young men) will pay to see that sort of thing. But outside
the confines of so-called gay cinema, the first rousing of sexual love in a
young guy – particularly homosexual love – has been pretty uncommon in a
commercial film. Slowly, but clearly, the times they are a’changin’.
(I should note here that it is not at all clear in Call
Me By Your Name whether Elio or Oliver is gay or if one or both are bisexual. We know that both have been involved with the opposite sex. I’m not sure it matters.)
As I’ve already said, this picture is beautiful to watch. It
was shot entirely on location and the scenic locale surely helps: the deep blue of Lago de Garda; afternoon sun over a sparkling pond; bicycling through an ancient, colonnaded ochre and straw-colored village; young folks lounging on the grass by the villa pool, itself set against a lush green forest; casual family breakfast out on the tiled patio under a leafy bower; and so forth. Much credit is due to the director of photography,
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who was able to capture the golden Lombardy summer light
of these and other scenes so gloriously. The interior scenes initially look and
feel claustrophobic with the suppressed, burgeoning passion (and related
anguish) experienced by Elio, and then intimately erotic once this blossoms
into a fulfilled love. The feel and pace of the film as a whole is unhurried
and pleasantly langorous, allowing the story and the relationship to build bit
by bit.
Director Guadagnino considers Call Me By Your Name to
be the final segment of a trilogy of pictures commencing with I Am Love and A Bigger Splash. “What links these three films”, he says, “is the
revelation of desire.” In the first two, following desire resulted in some dark
and/or regrettable outcomes; but here the consequence is more positive. This
movie is a “beautiful acknowledgement of how you change when you love someone
positively”, Guadagnino adds.
Key to the movie’s success is the lovely, complicated
performance by Timothee Chalamet as Elio. It’s a difficult role, as Elio is a
complex character, whose circumstances and emotions are in a state of flux. He’s
a teen sullenly facing a summer away from his friends; he’s also an inquisitive intellect; a musical prodigy; and a cosseted only child; and as the action advances he struggles with a confusing newfound desire is flooded and nearly overwhelmed by love’s rapture; and eventually must face it’s loss. He embodies the character so completely, we believe Chalamet IS Elio It’s a far bigger and more challenging part
and a character totally removed from his pretentious “Kyle” in Lady Bird. Definitely an award-worthy
piece of work, it is worth seeing Call Me By Your Name for Chalamet
alone.
With all the above going for it, I must admit that I never
fully engaged with Call Me By Your Name on an emotional level. As I watched, I
always felt like an observer. I suspect that this has to do with Guadagnino’s
directorial style – as I felt similarly about the otherwise excellent I Am Love, too. I admired both movies, but I never fell all the way in with them. I
can’t quite put my finger on why this is.
With this new picture, however, a couple of other reasons
for my emotional remove do stand out. The biggest one has to do with co-star
Armie Hammer. He’s been getting a fair amount of praise for his work in Call
Me By Your Name including nominations for best supporting actor by the
Golden Globes and others. And taking on this role was a courageous thing for Hammer.
Yet when Josh Duboff of Vanity Fair
started his profile of the actor with this line: “Armie Hammer is the sort of
actor who, at all times, looks like he’s stepped out of a cologne advertisement”,
I think he hit the nail on the head. He’s pretty, but he’s bland, anodyne. Most
egregiously for an actor in a meaty role like Oliver, he has little in the way
of emotional expression. As the socially comfortable, attractive guy he’s fine –
his manner, body language and attitude are perfect. But as a guy who, to his
own astonishment is falling into a passionate love affair with a relative kid,
and who is experiencing one of the most meaningful moments in his life – he falls
flat, he’s just too, um, did I already say bland? The screenplay has him acting
as a mentor of sorts to Elio – very caring and sensitive, and sharing in the
exultation of love; but watching Hammer, I never felt he was fully there, and
certainly never believed for a moment that he was flooded with love, passion or
any other significant emotional response. Chalamont has to act for both of them!
A lesser flaw, but still an important one for me, has to do
with the music. Most of the soundtrack in Call Me By Your Name is great and
appropriate for the time, place and circumstances – including classical music
from composers like J.S. Bach, Eric Satie, Maurice Ravel, and John Adams. At
one point the pop/dance song “Love My Way”
by the Psychedelic Furs shows up, just right for the time and the situation (it
was an international hit in 1982). But director Guadagnino is also a big fan of
singer–songwriter Sufjan Stevens, and so chose to include three of his songs as
well, two of which were written expressly for the film. That was three too
many. Guadagnino says, “I think Sufjan’s songs add another voice to the film.
They are kind of like a narration without narration.” Therein lies the problem.
The “other voice” is not the director’s voice, nor the screenwriter’s voice. All
three songs felt totally out of synch with the film musically, lyrically and emotionally.
All three were jarringly off – thus interfering with the mood which had been
carefully constructed by the rest of the creative team. (Even the last one, called Visions of Gideon, which played over the
closing credits, was annoyingly anachronistic with its refrain of “Is it a
video?”)
So it’s not perfect. That said, Call Me By Your Name is a
beautiful film that deserves to be seen: a lovely movie about falling heart and
soul in love, that fell a little short of grabbing my heart and soul.
2 hours 12 minutes
Grade B+
Currently in very limited
release; Opening in select additional theaters around the country December 22,
2017.
