Call Me by Your Name
2017 · Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Original language: English
- romance
- drama
The story
In the summer of 1983, a 17-year-old Elio spends his days in his family's villa in Italy. One day Oliver, a graduate student, arrives to assist Elio's father, a professor of Greco-Roman culture. Soon, Elio and Oliver discover a summer that will alter their lives forever.
What it’s like
Warm, sun-bleached summer light pours over the Lombardy countryside in this film, with golden-hour haze, peach and apricot tones, and a lush green garden that feels heavy with heat. Guadagnino favours long, unhurried takes and slow pans across sun-dappled stone, lingering on bodies in water, bicycles on dusty lanes, and the quiet interiors of a stone villa where shutters filter the afternoon glare. The sound is mostly cicadas, splashing water, and the soft ripple of Sufjan Stevens' piano sketches, with long stretches of ambient near-silence between them. The vibe is languorous, bittersweet and sensuous, the kind of mood that suits a slow weekend afternoon or a late evening alone when you want to be drawn in. Its pacing is deliberate, letting the seasons of a summer unfold in small gestures, glances, and conversations, following a young man's tentative awakening and the tender, uncertain bond that grows between him and an older visitor. Intimacy is frank and explicit at times, with several nude and sexual scenes, and the emotional weight is heavy, with a sustained ache of longing and loss rather than any violence. It is for viewers who want lush, emotionally honest romance with an adult register and a melancholy ending.
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