Call Me By Your Name (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Call Me By Your Name (2017) – L. Guadagnino

A breezy summer romance and/or a coming-of-age tale that also explores the tentative worries and secret freedoms of same-sex attraction.  Oliver (Armie Hammer) is an American graduate student (or post-doc) who comes to stay in Italy for the summer of 1983 to do research with a professor (of archaeology or ancient civilisations, perhaps) and to live in the professor’s summer chalet.  There he meets the professor’s 17-year-old son, Elio (Timothée Chalamet), and it is Elio’s story that we follow.  Although it is not quite clear for most of the first half of the film, in which Elio and Oliver develop a hesitant friendship, each is attracted to the other. You can feel the awkwardness when Elio finds a way to dance near Oliver during the Psychedelic Furs’ Love My Way at a local dance (and yes, “there’s an Armie on the dancefloor” indeed).  For Elio, this is likely to be his first affair with a man (and he initially responds to his own feelings by losing his virginity to a female admirer) but we don’t quite know about Oliver – he is a mystery to us as well as to Elio.  As the movie progresses, so does their relationship.  James Ivory’s Oscar-winning screenplay fortunately does not deal in stereotypes and the characters and their up-and-down relationship feel human and real.  Italy itself seems a fantasy world – and as all summers end, so too must the fantasy (although the wise and sensitive parents encourage Elio to cherish his memories).  I’m not really a big romance movie watcher and although this film avoided most (if not all) of the clichés of the genre, it was the final shot (over which the credits roll and the music of Sufjan Stevens plays) that really elevated the whole film to something special.  It was at that moment that I remembered what it was like to be a heartbroken teen in the ‘80s.