A stylistic and subtle two-hour-plus journey, director Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name is a beautiful film that wrestles delicately with themes of young love, sexual exploration, and growth. Elio, (Timothee Chalamet) is a 17-year-old living in Italy during the summer with his family where he meets Oliver (Armie Hammer), a classically handsome student of Chalamet’s father. What follows is an almost painstakingly drawn out summer romance between the two, the first 75 minutes or so of the movie replete with only palpable tension and chemistry between Chalamet and Hammer, which grows in its intensity as they gradually gravitate towards one another with more frequency.
Chalamet delivers what I would describe as a natural, effortless performance. He is a young 22 and easily passes for a clever, whip smart, curious 17-year-old. His character Elio spends his days at his family’s house lounging in the sun, swimming, reading, and composing and playing music. Hammer’s arrival very obviously throws a confusing wrench into Elio’s normally languid and almost hedonistic summer routine. Chalamet does well to capture the complicated emotions of a teenager experiencing his first head-over-heels love: he is standoffish and dismissive of Hammer at times, who is instantly a favorite of the family and the local women. He gets annoyed by Hammer’s brash confidence and comments on his informal language with Elio’s parents. These reactions and his dismissal of Oliver at first demonstrate Elio’s confidence and youthful swagger as he questions the presence of this larger-than-life outsider who has invaded his own personal sanctuary. But close quarters, common interests, and an intangible force hard for either of the two to articulate make it so they constantly find themselves together. As the movie goes on, Elio’s self-assuredness gives way to at first subtle and then obvious displays of his own vulnerability, and acknowledgment of the undeniable chemistry, compassion, and deep affection that exists between the two.
At the beginning of the film, it is almost hard to imagine how these two individuals who at first seem so far apart in so many ways find their way to one another. Oliver is a statuesque, intelligent, brash, and charismatic man, while Elio first appears as simply a rail thin, adventurous but quiet teenager. Elio seems to be able to bring out Oliver’s softer and more contemplative side, whereas the more time Elio spends with Oliver, we see his impressive talent and knowledge beyond his years, and a unique maturity. Both reveal the best in one another, and the film itself is a refreshing and rare portrayal of male actors in a movie as we frequently see raw emotion and sensitivity from all of the main male characters—whether that be Hammer, Chalamet, or Elio’s father, played by Michael Stuhlbarg. Stuhlbarg himself delivers one of the more memorable and prominent monologues in the movie after Elio has to deal with Oliver leaving after his six weeks are up. This preceding scene in which Elio bids farewell to Oliver is a particularly heart-wrenching moment, as the goodbye feels altogether too brief and formal. As much private vulnerability, openness, and emotion that the two display with one another throughout the film, the final scene in public on the train platform seemed to be a glaring rebuke of the double standard in society about public displays of affection in same-sex couples.
My only issue with the film may have been its pacing, as there are long stretches of time, especially in the first half of the movie, in which very little happens in terms of events that advance the plot. However, in the case of Call Me By Your Name, this feature almost seems to work. The gradual character and plot line development go along with other elements of the film, including the soft, sleepy background music in combination with a family that seems perpetually at ease in a gorgeous Italian villa with little to do besides pick fruit, ride a bicycle, and go out at night. The slow, aesthetically and stylistically pleasing set and environment also contrast effectively with the sharp intensity of the romance between Chalamet and Hammer.
