Call Me by Your Name **** ½ / *****
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino.
Written by: James Ivory based on the novel by André Aciman.
Starring: Timothée Chalamet (Elio), Armie Hammer (Oliver), Michael Stuhlbarg (Mr. Perlman), Amira Casar (Annella), Esther Garrel (Marzia), Victoire Du Bois (Chiara), Vanda Capriolo (Mafalda).
It’s the summer of 1983, in Northern Italy, and there really isn’t much to do. 17 year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet), is at his large family estate there, with his father, a Professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his mother (Amira Casar), and basically wasting his days, reading, playing music, swimming and sleeping. Every summer Professor Perlman welcomes a student to stay with them, help with his work, and this year, that student is American Oliver (Armie Hammer). There is something between Elio and Oliver from the start – some sort of electricity, a spark – and you feel it every time they are onscreen together, even if for the first hour or so of the movie, outwardly they don’t seem to like each other. But that just intensifies things even more.
There is probably no better director for this material than Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, who is that rare filmmaker who has the capability to make anything seem erotic. His film from last year, A Bigger Splash, simmered with sexual tension in its every interaction, no matter what two of the four characters were speaking to each other, or what they were speaking about. Call Me By Your Name is probably the most erotic, sexually charged film of 2017 – and that charge is greater in the first half, when the two of them are circling each other, rather in the second half, when they finally do give in to what they both have wanted all along.
Much of this has to do with the performances surely – and newcomer Chalamet and Hammer have the most chemistry of any screen couple this year. Newcomer Chalamet (who I have apparently seen before in Interstellar and Men, Women and Children – but don’t remember – I do remember him, obviously, from Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird from a month ago) really does some remarkable acting in this film, and almost all of it is under the surface. It’s a subtle performance, a quiet one as he has to keep up appearances on one level, while he aches with desire on another. Hammer at first seems more surface level than Chalamet – but gradually, he deepens as well, and their connection is real between them. They are aided great by the great soundtrack – including two songs by Sufjan Stevens, which will become instantly iconic, and double use of Love My Way, by The Psychedelic Furs, which plays two completely different ways at different times in the movie. They are also aided by the beauty of their surroundings, captured in wonderful cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. The slow, languid pace also works in the films favor – although the movie does run nearly two hours and twenty minutes, and starts to feel it late in the runtime (there is a trip Elio and Oliver take together, that I’m not sure quite works).
This is a story of first love – and perhaps great love. What Elio and Oliver have together cannot last – even if they were to stay together, eventually, it would mature into something else – perhaps better, perhaps worse. But what they do share is profound. Late in the film, Michael Stuhlbarg delivers one of the most stirring yet subtle monologues I have ever seen in a film – it’s quietly shattering, and devastating true. You would think the film couldn’t top that moment – and I don’t think it quite does – yet the final shot of the movie is nearly as brilliant. This is a quiet, slow movie – but also a wise and deceptively simple one.
