SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot.
Many critics were enamoured of Luca Guadagnino’s last two features, I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015), both of which set Tilda Swinton’s uniquely self-enclosed sensuality against striking Italian backdrops (Milan and San Remo in the former, the Sicilian coast in the latter). I found them beautiful yet bloodless, lacking a certain warmth.
Call Me by Your Name, on the other hand, radiates heat. It is a lush, lusty affair, all pounding hearts and blazing loins. Guadagnino has shown a fondness for imbuing the gastronomic with metaphorical significance; in his fifth feature he gives us splattered egg yolks and blood dripping on to lamb chops, and a repeated motif of ripening fruit, culminating in a sex scene involving peaches that will no doubt become notorious. Not since American Pie (1999) has fruit been so thoroughly defiled.
The peach scene is lifted almost exactly from the 2007 novel by André Aciman, an American scholar specialising in the work of Proust. It is a story of adolescent sexual awakening set in the well-appointed home of an academic in mid-1980s Italy.
Elio is the 17-year-old only child of American professor Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his beautiful, cosmopolitan wife (Amira Casar). Until now he has been mostly heterosexual and has an ongoing flirtation with childhood friend Marzia. But when 24-year-old Oliver, the latest in a series of visiting postdocs to spend a summer at the villa, usurps Elio’s bedroom, he also seizes Marzia’s place in Elio’s sexual fantasies. We first glimpse Oliver with Elio from an upper window; as he mounts the staircase, Marzia casually kisses him, as if passing on the mantle.
Oliver (Armie Hammer, perfectly cast) is the aggressively handsome embodiment of all things American: an academic who speaks in abbreviations though he is clearly extremely articulate, as demonstrated by a grandstanding monologue on the etymology of the word ‘apricot’. Elio is puppyish, wiry rather than chiselled, more naive than the older man but also sensitive and reckless. Timothée Chalamet is sensational in the role: fierce and articulate, his hooded eyes flickering with secret thoughts. He looks a little like Melvil Poupaud or Louis Garrel (whose sister Esther coincidentally stars as Marzia), but he has a purposefulness they lack.
For much of the film little happens, and we watch Elio and Oliver move in circles while seemingly no closer to making a move. One feels the influence of Eric Rohmer (Aciman is an admirer) and James Ivory (the film’s screenwriter), that great chronicler of repressed desire. The tone is languorous but the pace restless. Scenes are short and cuts abrupt. It’s not clear whether Elio wants to be Oliver – borrowing his swimsuits, copying the Star of David he wears around his neck – or have him. Despite their physical differences, the would-be lovers seem strangely fungible as they trade bedrooms, clothes and names.
Of course, Call Me by Your Name is a queer film, albeit one that has more in common with the work of André Téchiné than Barry Jenkins: the milieu is so middle-class it’s almost fantastic, packed with references to antiquity, to Liszt and Bach, Heidegger and Heraclitus. In this regard and in others, Guadagnino is remarkably faithful to Aciman’s text, though he transposes the action from the Italian Riviera to the Lombardy countryside and streamlines the narrative by culling certain characters. He also – intriguingly – does away with a framing device that casts the main narrative as a flashback (the book has the men meet in middle age, while Guadagnino’s film finishes six months after the events of the summer).
Still, the film retains a certain Proustian sensibility. The camera pays an almost hyperreal attention to detail, poring over certain words and touches with the obsessiveness of an infatuated teenager. Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s regular DP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s images are precise, saturated with cerulean blues, limoncello yellows, cherry reds and blushing apricots, but at the same time slightly worn and fuzzy, like a well-washed shirt. The world beyond Elio and Oliver’s immediate sphere is somehow faded (women, in particular, seem to hover out of focus in the background). Even the sound edit seems to over-amplify their voices.
The 1980s period setting heightens this effect. Call Me by Your Name is awash with details such as a Robert Mapplethorpe print, a Talking Heads T-shirt, a Penguin Classic. At an outdoor discotheque, Elio and Oliver dance to The Psychedelic Furs. It’s a backdrop that will raise a fond smile for many viewers. But Guadagnino’s setting is in a sense a platonic ideal of the 1980s. How many of us were ever so lithe and gorgeous, so intelligent and self-possessed? How many of us once knew the longing, and how many, really, the having? As Professor Perlman tells his son in an extraordinarily moving scene, a love like Elio and Oliver’s is rare indeed, and before we even know it, our best days are behind us. On the strength of this film, let’s hope that Guadagnino’s are not.
Catherine Wheatley, Sight and Sound, November 2017
Call Me by Your Name
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
©: Frenesy, La Cinéfacture
Co-production: Frenesy Film, La Cinéfacture
In association with: Morato Pane S.p.A., Faram 1957 S.p.A., Armando De Angelis S.r.l., Cinefinance Italia S.r.l., Water’s End Productions
Produced with the financial support of: Directorate General for Cinema, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali
Production Company: Regione Lombardia
With the contribution of: Regione Lazio Regional Fund for Cinema and Audiovisual Sector
With the support of: Lombardia Film Commission
Presented by: Memento Films International, RT Features, M.Y.R.A. Entertainment
Executive Producers: Derek Simonds, Tom Dolby, Margarethe Baillou, Francesco Melzi D’Eril, Naima Abed, Nicholas Kaiser, Sophie Mas, Lourenço Sant’Anna
Produced by: James Ivory, Howard Rosenman, Rodrigo Teixeira, Marco Morabito, Peter Spears, Luca Guadagnino, Emilie Georges
Line Producer: Stella Savino
Associate Producers: Allan Neuwirth, Kim Surowicz, Susanne Filkins, Abdi Nazemian
Post-production Supervisor: Sacha Guttenstein
2nd Unit Director: Ferdinando Cito Filomarino
1st Assistant Director: Dominique Delany
Script Supervisor: Rachel Griffiths
Casting by: Stella Savino
Screenplay by: James Ivory
Based on the novel by: André Aciman
Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
1st Assistant Camera: Gaia Ferme
Visual Effects: Metaphyx
Editor: Walter Fasano
Production Designer: Samuel Deshors
Art Director: Roberta Federico
Landscape Designer: Gaia Chaillet Giusti
Set Decorator: Violante Visconti
Costume Designer: Giulia Piersanti
Make-up: Fernanda Perez
Hair Stylist: Manolo Garcia
Main Titles Designed by: Chen Li
Colour: White Light
‘Mystery of Love’/‘Visions of Gideon’ Written/Performed by: Sufjan Stevens
Music Supervisor: Robin Urdang
Music Consultant: Gerry Gershman
Production Sound Mixer: Yves-Marie Omnes
Re-recording Mixer: Jean-Pierre Laforce
Cultural Anthropologists: Carlo Antonelli, Roberto Solci
In loving memory of: Bill Paxton
The producers wish to thank: Bernardo Bertolucci, Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Louis Garrel, Grace Coddington
Cast
Armie Hammer (Oliver)
Timothée Chalamet (Elio Perlman)
Michael Stuhlbarg (Mr Perlman)
Amira Casar (Annella Perlman)
Esther Garrel (Marzia)
Victoire Du Bois (Chiara)
Vanda Capriolo (Mafalda)
Antonio Rimoldi (Anchise)
Elena Bucci (Bambi)
Marco Sgrosso (Nico)
André Aciman (Mounir)
Peter Spears (Isaac)
Italy-France-USA-Brazil 2017©
132 mins
Digital
SIGHT AND SOUND
Never miss an issue with Sight and Sound, the BFI’s internationally renowned film magazine. Subscribe from just £25*
*Price based on a 6-month print subscription (UK only). More info: sightandsoundsubs.bfi.org.uk
BFI SOUTHBANK
Welcome to the home of great film and TV, with three cinemas and a studio, a world-class library, regular exhibitions and a pioneering Mediatheque with 1000s of free titles for you to explore. Browse special-edition merchandise in the BFI Shop.We're also pleased to offer you a unique new space, the BFI Riverfront – with unrivalled riverside views of Waterloo Bridge and beyond, a delicious seasonal menu, plus a stylish balcony bar for cocktails or special events. Come and enjoy a pre-cinema dinner or a drink on the balcony as the sun goes down.
BECOME A BFI MEMBER
Enjoy a great package of film benefits including priority booking at BFI Southbank and BFI Festivals. Join today at bfi.org.uk/join
BFI PLAYER
We are always open online on BFI Player where you can watch the best new, cult & classic cinema on demand. Showcasing hand-picked landmark British and independent titles, films are available to watch in three distinct ways: Subscription, Rentals & Free to view.
See something different today on player.bfi.org.uk
Join the BFI mailing list for regular programme updates. Not yet registered? Create a new account at www.bfi.org.uk/signup
Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
Questions/comments? Contact the Programme Notes team by email