“Call Me by Your Name,” a 132-minute, single-thread romantic drama between two young men in Northern Italy, from director Luca Guadagnino (“I Am Love,” “A Bigger Splash”), may be the most gorgeous and heartfelt movie of 2017. In a year dominated by an overwhelming sense of dread and hatred, “Call Me by Your Name” exudes the sensations of hope and love for over two hours, never coming off as hokey or self-righteous. In an intricate yet simple story, with 1983 Northern Italy as a backdrop, Timothée Chalamet plays Elio, an American-Italian 17-year-old living with his family in their summer home. Elio meets Oliver (Armie Hammer), a handsome American graduate student, after he comes to work for Elio’s father, Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg), a professor of archaeology. At first, Mr. and Mrs. Perlman (Amira Casar) find fault with Oliver’s personality (including his farewell of choice, a blasé “Later”), but Elio, a more withdrawn and cautious soul, sees something comforting and relaxing in Oliver’s carefree attitude.
It wouldn’t spoil anything to say that the two begin to grow closer together, exploring a romantic relationship, but the movie takes a while to get there. First, typical of movie romances, an animosity lingers between the two. They both form sexual relationships with girls in Elio’s friend group, though Elio’s is born out of spite, a response to Oliver’s fascination with another girl. Elio’s quasi-girlfriend, Marzia (Esther Garrell) shares his love of literature and music, but from her introduction — Oliver rubs Elio’s sore shoulder during a volleyball game, and when she tries to copy him, Elio shrugs her off — the disconnect between the two couldn’t be clearer. Elio struggles to communicate his feelings toward his alluring house guest. The melancholy of Oliver’s departure — he’s only in residence until the end of the summer — looms over every conversation, and Elio must decide if he should speak and risk heartbreak or preserve the status quo and suffer silently.
The two leads of “Call Me by Your Name” have impossibly good on-screen chemistry. Hammer’s half-taunting, half-nurturing Oliver plays well alongside Chalamet’s wide-eyed and quiet Elio. The first reluctant moments of their romance leave the viewer aching for them to just go ahead and get together already. Brief smiles and small touches shatter the earth beneath them. The supporting cast doesn’t get much screen time, which would only bog down the whole affair. In spite of all this, Garrell’s performance as Marzia nails the same sort of adolescent longing Chalamet deftly sculpts, and Stuhlbarg, as Mr. Perlman, gives a simply beautiful monologue near the end of the movie.
About a third of the way through “Call Me by Your Name,” I realized the story was heading into the romance-only territory. Don’t count on a “will-they, won’t-they” predicament, because the movie’s schtick lies in “they-will.” While it’s not a requirement by any means for a romance movie to include other plotlines, it’s always nice when the setting and characters feel like they exist outside the romantic framework. To my surprise, screenwriter James Ivory’s adaptation of André Aciman’s novel finds a way to keep the romance interesting. When there’s no war, threat of poverty or social stigma to distract an audience, the power of romance alone has a gripping effect. The writing is brilliant at times — a bickering Italian couple argue over dinner about the tragedy of compromise — but it can also come off as much too heavy-handed. Before Elio can confess his feelings to Oliver, his mother decides, on a whim, to read him a short story from “The Heptaméron” (because, you know, they’re a sophisticated family) about a knight in love with a princess. Conveniently for Elio, the knight is also having trouble confessing his feelings. He asks her, “Is it better to speak or die?” That’s kind of a dumb question: is there any doubt that Elio is going to speak (or any concern he’ll die)?
Guadagnino masterfully replicates the lilting sensation of summer vacation. Each shot of the Italian countryside glows with the warmth of youth; even moments indoors or during the heavy summer rain feel comforting. The camera lingers on trees and fields with the same sensuality one might employ when filming a nude body. Many moments offer a tactile pleasure — watching fingers run through curly hair, or seeing sweat and water drip down a bare back. Guadagnino’s directing style reveres European art cinema, less concerned with continuity and more with composition. Static frames, though rare, are paintings in their own right, and long takes, which run the risk of showing off, instead flow naturally through the scenes. Traces of Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni (“Blow Up,” “L’Avventura”) surface in “Call Me by Your Name” during its meditative and erotic moments. Whatever faults the story may have, the movie’s visual competence more than makes up for it.
Nothing about this movie should have worked for me: the long runtime, the romance, the contributions of sob-inducing singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens to the movie’s score. And yet, “Call Me By Your Name” asks you to surrender yourself to its gentle power, letting it captivate you the same way your first passionate crush did, before she rejected you and left a hole that only ranting about movies could fill. The audience at the screening I attended left the theater in silent reflection, a testament to the sheer beauty of onscreen romance left in very capable hands.
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