Call Me By Your Name - Luca Guadagnino (2017)

Do you remember the moment you discovered you were a sexual creature? You think of others as more than just handsome or beautiful. You actually want to do things to them. You start to wonder creatively what those things could be.

Luca Guadagnino's "Call Me By Your Name," reaches back to that moment when one's sexuality first rears its head.

Every summer, the Perlman family hosts a guest for the summer. The patriarch, Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg), is a professor and it's an opportunity for a kind of mentorship. This summer, that guest is Oliver (Armie Hammer), a twenty-four-year-old student of Mr. Perlman.

At first, Elio (Timothee Chalamet), the Perlmans' seventeen-year-old son, doesn't like Oliver at all. In fact, Oliver is kind of a dick. He's arrogant and dismissive. He refuses any overtures of friendship, but he himself demands constant companionship. He expects others to drop everything to accommodate him. So yeah, Oliver is not just kind of a dick. He's a straight-up bastard.

Elio has to spend almost all of his time entertaining Oliver. He has to go on errands with him. Whenever it suits Oliver, he insists Elio must accompany him all of the time as he goes bike riding or swimming, etc.

Slowly, Elio's feelings turn from annoyance to attraction. Like a little man-crush, and the romance builds from there.

At the same time, Elio is curious about sex in general. He hasn't found his identification yet, so while he's falling for Oliver, his romance with girlfriend Marzia (Esther Garrel) is progressing, getting more serious and more sexual.

But as his attraction to Olivier turns into infatuation, he has to make some kind of choice. To be fair, Marzia deserves that much. She needs to know where her relationship with Elio is going.

The bulk of the film concentrates on the evolving romance between Oliver and Elio. Now, the time he spends with Oliver, running errands, bike riding, swimming etc. have gone from tedious to treasured.

The way the story plays out with this small intimate group of characters, against the backdrop of northern Italy in the summer makes me think of Bernardo Bertolucci's "Stealing Beauty." Just as in "Stealing Beauty," the characters adore each other and that endears them to us. Plus, the love scenes between Oliver and Elio are soft and intimate.

One thing I have learned from art-house, gay-centered films is that all of the love scenes starts with play fighting. I don't believe that's the way it is in life, but I don't think I've ever seen a gay love sequence without that wrestling kind of foreplay.


The tenderness and subtly which with Guadagnino unfolds this romance is beautiful. If you like love stories at all, you'll enjoy "Call Me By Your Name."