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Armie Hammer & Timothée Chalamet find love in Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Aloysius J. Gleek:
....Call Me By Your Name was made with real love, with good intentions, with a clarity of heart and purposeful, unpretentious intellect. That shows in every frame. Call Me by Your Name is a true stunner. It’s sexy and sad and funny. It’s Italy, it’s summer, it’s food, it’s family. It’s lust and shame and hope and resignation. It’s life, messy and brilliant.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/01/call-me-by-your-name-sundance-review
SUNDANCE 2017
The Gorgeous
Call Me by Your Name
Makes Sundance
Swoon
Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of a modern gay classic is a wonder.
by RICHARD LAWSON
JANUARY 23, 2017 1:04 PM
Thank God for the Italians. Four days into what had been feeling like a less-than-thrilling Sundance Film Festival—marred, of course, by real-world events—along came a film of such dizzying beauty and rich, genuine feeling that if I were to go home today, I would still call the whole festival a success. That film is Call Me by Your Name, an adaptation of the 2007 André Aciman novel that is something of a modern classic of gay literature. Directed by Italian dream weaver Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love, A Bigger Splash), the film is a swirling wonder, a film about coming of age, about the secrets of youth, the magic of summer, the beauty of Italy. As a steady and unrelenting snow descended on Park City, Call Me by Your Name kissed Sundance with light and warmth.
Which may sound a little purple, a little tumescent—but this movie inspires such sentiment. Guadagnino has created something of such texture, such power that it’s hard to talk about it in less than hyperbolic terms. First, I’ll tell you what it’s about. Timothée Chalamet, from Homeland and Miss Stevens, plays Elio, a smart, earnest, precocious kid living an odd and lovely kind of life in the summer of 1983. His parents—fabulously played by Amira Casar and Michael Stuhlbarg—are international academics, spending summers at a villa in Northern Italy that Elio’s mother inherited. Living in a (at least) trilingual household full of books and discussion about said books, Elio is intellectually beyond-his-years, a confident and curious kid who nonetheless feels woefully ignorant, or inexperienced, in one crucial field.
It’s summer, and Elio is 17, so obviously that field is love and sex. Elio is handsome, a beanpole topped with a thicket of dark curls, so he’s got the interest of some French girls staying nearby. He’s interested in them too, but is not pulled to them in the same way that he’s drawn inextricably to Oliver, the 20-something grad student boarding at Elio’s family’s house while he works with Elio’s father. Oliver is played by Armie Hammer, that Ken doll colossus who here uses his ludicrous proportions and chiseled handsomeness to great, surprisingly witty and sensitive effect. Elio’s attraction to Oliver—and Oliver’s to Elio—is laid out delicately by Guadagnino, who adapted Aciman’s book with Walter Fasano and none other than __James Ivory __ (whose Maurice is nodded to throughout). The film’s pacing is fluid but helter-skelter, long and considered takes suddenly giving way to ecstatic short bursts.
Which is a pretty good approximation of the rhythms of memory, of adolescent desire, of summer’s intoxicating spell. Call Me By Your Name is narrative in that it tells the short, bittersweet story of Elio and Oliver, but it is more a terrarium of human experience, a sensory immersion that is remarkably full in its vision. Guadagnino fills every scene with life—people, insects, plants. Each shot is busy with existence, but Guadagnino does not overwhelm. Working with cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Guadagnino gives Call Me by Your Name the faded vibrancy of an old postcard, of a treasured memory. There’s a gentleness, a quietness tempering all the intense surges of feeling rippling between Elio and Oliver. It’s an exquisitely composed film, blessed by terrific performances and perfectly scored by a selection of classical compositions and a pair of new songs by Sufjan Stevens. (Yes, on top of everything else, there’s new Sufjan Stevens music too.)
There’s so much to gush about in this movie, and I’m sure many fans of the book, gay or otherwise, are dying to know whether the movie “goes there” in terms of one particular sexy scene. (It both does and doesn’t.) But in the interest of brevity, I’m just going to zero in on my favorite two things about the film. First is Chalamet’s performance. A 21-year-old La Guardia [high school] alum, Chalamet has the bearing of a natural; he’s deeply committed to his character but also infuses Elio with something of himself, too, as the best movie stars do. Chalamet seems to know that he’s got an innate charm, a boyish grace, and he uses that to striking effect. Elio, soulful and impetuous and a little bratty, is a kid you’ve known, a kid you wanted to be, a kid you care and root for. It’s a mature and thoughtful performance, and it augurs great things for Chalamet going forward. Hell, the tremendous extended final shot of the film would be an acting opus for someone twice or three times his age. Call Me by Your Name is not Chalamet’s first piece of work (watch Miss Stevens on Netflix), but it feels in every sense like a grand debut.
The other thing I really love about Guadagnino’s film is the way it captures something I might have a hard time explaining. It’s the film’s rendering of what it feels like to be a teenager living in many worlds at once. Meaning, we see Elio alert and interested when interacting with his parents and their friends—he’s a sophisticated kid who’s used to the company of grown-ups. But we know, of course, that something more primal is happening to Elio, something consuming and huge—the particular atomic weight of that one special summer I hope we all had—that he will not tell his parents about (not yet, anyway). So, Elio must act as if nothing is happening while everything is happening, a perhaps universal teenage balancing act, a dance between inner and outer lives, which is really hard to communicate on film. But Guadagnino and Chalamet figure it out, and Call Me by Your Name becomes a coming of age film—and absolutely a coming-out film—that replaces more familiar smarm and canned lesson-learning with something deeply sincere, kind, and perceptive.
That kindness, that sincerity, that wisdom is no better represented than in a monologue given by Stuhlbarg toward the end of the film. Stuhlbarg delivers it with such compassion, such humanity, and Guadagnino knows to film it in an unfussy way. In the scene, Elio’s father essentially offers his son a philosophy for living, stressing the importance of letting pain exist next to joy. It’s a remarkably comforting, empathetic, simple (and yet not simple at all) bit of insight, one we could all use. That Guadagnino essentially makes this the emotional climax of his film (not quite, but almost) indicates to me that Call Me By Your Name was made with real love, with good intentions, with a clarity of heart and purposeful, unpretentious intellect. That shows in every frame. Call Me by Your Name is a true stunner. It’s sexy and sad and funny. It’s Italy, it’s summer, it’s food, it’s family. It’s lust and shame and hope and resignation. It’s life, messy and brilliant.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
Luca Guadagnino, director of the visionary, modern classics I Am Love and A Bigger Splash (which is in theaters now) is filming his next movie right now and one that is sure to stir up controversy and probably a few other things. Based on the book by André Aciman' Call Me By Your Name tells the story of 17-year old Elio (played by Timothée Chalamet, who is 20), the only child of an American-Italian family, whose family take in a 24-year old American scholar named Oliver (played by Armie Hammer, 29) while in Italy. Oliver’s stay is meant to be to help Elio’s father (Michael Stuhlbarg) with his work in Greek culture but soon the two young men become intensely attracted to each other and a summer of danger and passion ensues in this 1980s-set coming of age drama.
The screenplay was co-written by Guadagnino, Walter Fasano and James Ivory – the Oscar-nominated director of Howard’s End and as well as the seminal gay masterpiece Maurice. The film is being co-produced by Frenesy Film Company and Water’s End Productions.
http://awardswatch.com/2016/05/31/luca-guadagninos-call-me-by-your-name-starring-armie-hammer-and-timothee-chalamet/
Aloysius J. Gleek:
Aloysius J. Gleek:
http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/all-the-gifs-you-need-from-the-call-me-by-your-name-trailer.html
LONGING
All the Unbearably Intense Sexual-Tension GIFs
You Need From the Call Me by Your Name Trailer
By Jackson McHenry
August 1, 2017 12:15 pm
Oh, my. Photo: Sony Pictures Classics’
Today, we got the trailer for Call Me by Your Name, the standout gay romance that premiered at Sundance about Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet giving each other significant glances in Italy. The film is based on the novel by André Aciman, directed by A Bigger Splash’s Luca Guadagnino, and written by Merchant Ivory’s James Ivory. But enough about the details of the film: What we’re here to discuss today is the sexual tension on display in the trailer, for it is a thing of true beauty and delight, and a perfect opportunity to make GIFs — lots of them. The next time you consider using something as crude as a winky face or eggplant emoji, consider sending one of these refined creations instead.
Let’s start things off with some light gazing across the room, as Oliver (Hammer) admires Elio (Chalamet) fingering the ivories.
If you haven’t read Call Me by Your Name, I’m not going to say what happens with a peach. But rest assured: Stuff happens with a peach.
That face when someone mentions knots.
You have my attention.
It’s always a sign when guys are really into the Greeks.
Time to get serious — like, “going from playing a kid in Homeland to starring in a romantic drama based on a book” serious.
Gaze longingly at me across a stretch of greenery on a hot Italian summer day in a way that makes me question my sexuality and spurs me on a journey of self-discovery I will reckon with throughout the rest of my life, daddy.
I’m pretty sure this GIF is somehow actually a Sufjan Stevens lyric.
Hello.
Front-Ranger:
I agree--it's stunning!
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