http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/garden/06Domestic.html?mcubz=3Domestic LivesThe Day He Knew Would ComeBy ANDRÉ ACIMAN JAN. 5, 2011Sometimes the writer and his sons would invent errands to avoid reaching home too soon. A favorite was a visit to the Christmas tree vendors on 110th Street. Credit Richard Perry/The New York TimesTHE doors to their bedrooms are always shut, their bathroom always empty. On weekends, when you wake up in the morning, the kitchen is as clean as you left it last night. No one touched anything; no one stumbled in after partying till the wee hours to heat up leftovers, or cook a frozen pizza, or leave a mess on the counter while improvising a sandwich. The boys are away now.Two decades ago there were two of us in our Upper West Side home. Then we were many. Now, we’re back to two again.I knew it would happen this way. I kept joking about it. Everyone joked. Joking was my way of rehearsing their absence, of immunizing myself like King Mithridates, who feared being poisoned and learned to take a tiny dose of poison on the sly each day.Even in my happiest moments I knew I was rehearsing. Waiting for my eldest son’s school bus, standing on the corner of 110th Street and Broadway at 6:20 p.m. while leaning against the same mailbox with a warm cup of coffee each time — all this was rehearsal. Even straining to spot the yellow bus as far up as 116th Street and thinking it was there when in fact I hadn’t seen it at all was part of rehearsing. Everything was being logged, nothing forgotten.When the bus would finally appear, the driver, an impatient Vietnam veteran, would dash down Broadway, either squeaking to a halt if the light was red before 110th or hurtling across to 109th to let some of the students out. The bus, from Horace Mann, trailed the one from the Riverdale Country School by a few seconds every evening. I’d remember that, just as I’d remember the reedy voice of the beggar squatting outside Starbucks, or my son’s guarded squirm when I’d hug him in view of the schoolmates who watched from the school bus window.By late November it was already dark at 6 p.m. As always, coffee, mailbox, traffic. Our ritual never changed, even in the cold. Together, we’d walk down 110th Street and talk. Sometimes we needed to buy something along the way, which made our time together last longer. Sometimes we made up errands to avoid reaching home too soon, especially after Thanksgiving when all three sons and I would walk over to the Canadian Christmas tree vendors and chat them up about prices. And sometimes I’d tell my eldest that it helped to talk about the day when we wouldn’t be able to take these walks together. Of course, he’d pooh-pooh me each time, as I would pooh-pooh his own anxieties about college. He liked rituals. I liked rehearsing. Rituals are when we wish to repeat what has already happened, rehearsals when we repeat what we fear might yet occur. Maybe the two are one and the same, our way to parley and haggle with time.Sometimes, in winter, when it’s dark, and the feel, the lights and the sound of the city can so easily remind me of the bus stop at 6:20 p.m., I’ll still head out to 110th Street and stand there awhile and just think, hoping it might even hurt.But it never hurts. Partly because I’ve rehearsed everything so thoroughly that scarcely an unchecked memory can slip through or catch me off guard, and partly because I’ve always suspected there was more sentiment than feeling in my errands to 110th Street.Besides, e-mail and cellphones kept my eldest son, in college, present at all times. And there were his twin brothers who still lived at home and would continue to do so for two more years, shielding me from his absence. Together the twins and I still walked by the tree vendors on 110th Street and still put off buying anything until it was almost Christmas Eve. Things hardly changed. We removed one leaf from the dining table, my eldest’s dirty running shoes disappeared from our hallway, and his bedroom door remained shut, for days sometimes. Life had become quiet. Everyone had space. In the morning, on his way to class in Chicago, he always managed to call. A new ritual had sprung.Then this past September, the twins left as well. Suddenly a half gallon of milk lasts eight days, not just one. We don’t buy sausages or peanut butter or stock all manner of cereals that have more sugar than wheat. There is no one to rush home and cook for, or edit college applications for, or worry about when they’re not back past 3 a.m. No sorting though dirty socks, no mediating the endless bickering about who owns which shirt, no setting my alarm clock to ungodly hours because someone can’t hear his alarm clock in the morning, no making sure they have 12 No. 2 pencils, and not just two.All things slow down to what their pace had been two decades earlier. My wife and I are rediscovering things we didn’t even know we missed. We can stay out as long as we wish, go away on weekends, travel abroad, have people over on Sunday night, even go to the movies when we feel like it, and never again worry about doing laundry after midnight because the boys refuse to wear the same jeans two days in a row. The gates are thrown open, the war is over, we’re liberated.Months after they’d left, I finally realized that the one relationship I had neglected for so many years was none other than my relationship with myself. I missed myself. I and me had stopped talking, stopped meeting, lost touch, drifted apart. Now, 20 years later, we were picking up where we’d left off and resumed unfinished conversations. I owned myself.One evening, while preparing dinner with my wife, I went a step further and realized I had committed the unmentionable: I had stopped thinking of the three persons who are still dearer than life itself. I did not miss them and, stranger yet, hadn’t thought of them all day. Is the human heart this callous? Can out of sight, out of mind apply to one’s children as well? Really?I was almost ready to pass the cruelest verdict on myself when I suddenly came across something I could never have foreseen, much less rehearsed. A young couple with twins in a stroller was crossing the street in a rush, precisely where the school bus used to stop. As I watched them chat with one of the Canadians at the Christmas tree stall, I suddenly wished I was in the young father’s place with my own twins, 10 years, five years ago, even last year. We’d buy something warm to drink across the street then rush to say hi to the tree vendors. Now it seemed I’d lost the right to walk up to them.I envied the couple with the twins. And, as though to prod the knife deeper into the wound, for a moment I allowed myself to think that this is 20 years ago, I’ve just gotten married, my children are not born yet, and our new, three-bedroom apartment feels far too vacant for just the two of us. I stare at the couple and am thinking ahead for them, or ahead for myself, it’s not clear which, picturing the good things that have yet to come, even telling myself that the time for the 6:20 bus lies so very, very far away that it’s almost impudent to conjure it up just now.And then I finally saw things for what they were. Just as the boys came and went this Christmas, this is how it always is and has been: things come and then they go, and however we bicker with time and put all manner of bulwarks to stop it from doing the one thing it knows, the best thing is learning how to give thanks for what we have. And at Christmas I was thankful; their bedroom doors were open again. But I knew, even as I welcomed the flurry of bags and boxes and hugs and yelps, that a small, sly corner of my mind was already dreading and rehearsing that morning in January when they’d all head back to the airport.André Aciman, a professor of comparative literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center, is the author, most recently, of “Eight White Nights,” a novel.
Again--is this a tease, are we are looking at The Sequel,Mr and Mrs Armie Oliver meets--???
So--both at the beginning and at the end,this conversation betweenArmie Hammer and Dakota Johnsonis almost entirely about Luca Guadagnino--is this a tease, are we are looking at The Sequel,Mr and Mrs Armie Oliver meets 'Teemmy' Elio? STUDIO[youtube=1067,600]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnDtfDRsFto[/youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnDtfDRsFtohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AkWb0e5xvoVARIETY STUDIO: Variety's Actors on Actors presented by Amazon StudiosArmie Hammer and Dakota JohnsonActors on Actors - Full Conversation(and The Sequel??)sandra innitPublished on Dec 5, 2018and also:Variety StudioPublished on Dec 23, 2018
It must be said that Call Me by Your Name is a triumph in every regard. Michael Stuhlbarg’s role as Elio’s father isn’t necessarily a large role in terms of screentime, but he delivers a monologue towards the end of the film that felt like it made time stop. Luca Guadagnino and James Ivory’s script is measured and tight; thoughtful and delicate. Every inch of this movie is expertly crafted, right down to the stunning final shot. It’s at once a universal story of young love and a relatable, emotional story of a homosexual awakening. In that regard it’s a tremendous love story period, but also a winning entry in the legion of queer cinema.http://collider.com/call-me-by-your-name-review/Sundance 2017Call Me by Your NameSundance 2017 ReviewArmie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet Astound in Sensual Triumphby ADAM CHITWOODMonday 23 January 2017 Days filled with swimming, reading, and eating fresh fruit ... Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg and Armie Hammer in Call Me by Your NameIn my four years attending the Sundance Film Festival, I’m not sure I’ve seen anything as purely rapturous as Call Me by Your Name. The new feature film from I Am Love and A Bigger Splash filmmaker Luca Guadagnino chronicles a summer romance that blossoms between a young boy and a visitor in northern Italy, and by the film’s end it solidifies its place as one of the queer cinema greats alongside Carol, Brokeback Mountain, and Moonlight. The film is a tremendously sensual, hypnotic coming of age/coming out tale of first love. Anchored by a phenomenal breakout performance from Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer’s best work yet, and masterful craftsmanship, Call Me by Your Name is an instant addition to the best romances of the 21st century.Based on the book of the same name by André Aciman, the film takes place in 1983 in Northern Italy, where a 17-year-old boy named Elio is spending the summer in his family’s 17th century villa. His father (Michael Stuhlbarg), a professor of Greco-Roman culture, enlists a research assistant named Oliver (Hammer) to come and spend the summer with his family. Elio is transfixed by Oliver at first sight, but approaches the handsome American warily, keeping him at arm’s length. As the summer continues and Elio and Oliver play a game of chicken, daring one another to make the first romantic overture, the two finally give into their feelings and spark a romance that is passionate, playful, and pure.Chalamet is nothing short of a revelation as Elio. The actor is probably best known for his work on Homeland or for a brief role in Interstellar, but this is one of the biggest breakthrough performances in recent memory. He imbues Elio with complicated layers—a confident exterior; a precocious charm; a fearful undercurrent. All of these shine through and more and he’s so good in the role that at first you even doubt whether he actually likes Oliver. Of course he’s simply preparing himself for rejection by throwing out the first jabs, but this results in a relationship that is at first delightfully contentious, then playfully so before turning into full on flirtation.But as a closeted 17-year-old, Elio is still working out his feelings by losing his virginity to a local Italian girl who has the hots for him. Their relationship never comes off as phony, more as an exploration, and there’s a ticking clock plot point towards the end of the film that raises the stakes in hilariously sexy fashion.As the relationship between Elio and Oliver becomes physical, the film really digs into this as a first love story and a coming out story. Love is universal, so the feelings between Elio and Oliver are the same feelings felt by all, but it’s nice that Guadagnino doesn’t ignore the elephant in the room: that Elio and Oliver’s sexuality is a thing to be hidden at that point in time. There’s a reason their relationship began so contentiously, and Oliver makes reference early in the film that he’s “been good” so far and doesn’t want to do anything to mess that up. It’s heartbreaking, really, to see Elio so miserable at the start of the film, surrounded by such beauty.But this is no misery porn. The teasing that goes on between the two characters is magnificently handled by Guadagnino, who keeps a playful hand on the proceedings so as not to drown the film in self-serious romance. Summer flings are fun! So are first loves. And while this does blossom into something deeply felt, the summer season and Italian setting add a touch of lightheartedness to the scenes. Moreover, Guadagnino’s focus on sensuality over sexuality imbues the film with a romp vibe with an undeniable allure. One imagines that a more explicit or erotic version of the film would have downplayed how deeply felt the emotions are between Oliver and Elio.Gorgeously shot by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Arabian Nights ), this is a film that you just want to soak up. The Italian scenery is milked for all its worth, and the days filled with swimming, reading, and eating fresh fruit are divine. But the secret weapon to immersing audiences into the world of Call Me by Your Name is some incredible sound design. The footsteps on the gravel roads, the creaking floors in the ancient villa—you not only see this world, you feel it. That only allows the audience to fall deeper into the film’s trance, becoming infatuated with the romance between Elio and Oliver.It must be said that Call Me by Your Name is a triumph in every regard. Stuhlbarg’s role as Elio’s father isn’t necessarily a large role in terms of screentime, but he delivers a monologue towards the end of the film that felt like it made time stop. Guadagnino and James Ivory’s script is measured and tight; thoughtful and delicate. Every inch of this movie is expertly crafted, right down to the stunning final shot. It’s at once a universal story of young love and a relatable, emotional story of a homosexual awakening. In that regard it’s a tremendous love story period, but also a winning entry in the legion of queer cinema.Rating: A
I had the hardest time stopping where the spoilers began, but I did it, because I want to see the movie!
It’s 1983, “somewhere in Northern Italy.” The height of summer, and all of the neighborhood teenagers are in heat. Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet, keeping the promise he showed in “Miss Stevens” last September) is still a virgin. A 17-year-old American whose father, a local celebrity, is an eminent professor specializing in Greco-Roman culture (Michael Stuhlbarg), Elio has sprouted from the soil like the apricot trees that surround his family’s villa, and he’s impatiently waiting to bloom. Scrawny enough to be mistaken for a child but sophisticated enough to be mistaken for a man, Elio is a multilingual music prodigy who’s more comfortable with Bach and Berlioz than he is in his own body. He knows everything and nothing. But he’s about to get one hell of an education. (....)Guadagnino lives for the climactic portion of this story, when feelings are finally transmuted into action and Oliver’s true nature breaks through the marble bust of his body (Armie Hammer’s warmth in these scenes is extraordinary). The details are best experienced for yourself, but it’s safe to say that movie lives up to the book’s steamy reputation, and Chalamet and Hammer throw themselves at each other with the clumsy abandon of first love. Growingly increasingly divorced from its source material as it goes along, the final beats of Guadagnino’s adaptation galvanize two hours of simmering uncertainty into a gut-wrenchingly wistful portrait of two people trying to find themselves before it’s too late.http://www.indiewire.com/2017/01/call-me-by-your-name-review-armie-hammer-luca-guadagnino-sundance-2017-1201772350/Sundance 2017Call Me by Your NameSundance 2017 ReviewLuca Guadagnino Delivers A Queer MasterpieceHot on the heels of A Bigger Splash the filmmaker returns with a film that's worthy of comparisons to Carol and Moonlightby David Ehrlich @davidehrlichMonday 23 January 2017 3:15 pm ‘He’s about to get one hell of an education’ ... Michael Stuhlbarg, Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer in Call Me by Your Name“Is it better to speak or to die?” That’s the core question of “Call Me By Your Name,” which surfaces in a scene where a character reads the words of Marguerite of Navarre in “The Heptaméron,” but it’s an idea at the heart of all queer narratives. It’s been especially present in queer cinema, where muteness and survival are often the most bittersweet bedfellows. But “Call Me By Your Name” not only quotes Marguerite’s words, it suffuses them into every fiber of its being. It’s a great film because of how lucidly it poses her question, and an essential one because of how courageously it answers it.Directed by Luca Guadagnino with all of his usual cool (“I Am Love”) and adapted from André Aciman’s beloved 2007 novel of the same name, the rapturous “Call Me By Your Name” nearly rates alongside recent LGBT phenomenons “Carol” and “Moonlight,” matching the artistry and empathy with which those new masterworks untangled the repressive desire of same-sex attraction.It’s 1983, “somewhere in Northern Italy.” The height of summer, and all of the neighborhood teenagers are in heat. Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet, keeping the promise he showed in “Miss Stevens” last September) is still a virgin. A 17-year-old American whose father, a local celebrity, is an eminent professor specializing in Greco-Roman culture (Michael Stuhlbarg), Elio has sprouted from the soil like the apricot trees that surround his family’s villa, and he’s impatiently waiting to bloom. Scrawny enough to be mistaken for a child but sophisticated enough to be mistaken for a man, Elio is a multilingual music prodigy who’s more comfortable with Bach and Berlioz than he is in his own body. He knows everything and nothing. But he’s about to get one hell of an education.Every summer, Elio’s father flies out a graduate student to stay at the villa and help him with his research — this year’s intern is Oliver (Armie Hammer, as sensational here as he was in “The Social Network,” but similarly a touch too old for the part). Oliver is 24 and his body is an epic unto itself, as big as any one of the ancient statues that have been dredged up from the local seas. Arrogant, eager, and almost suspiciously handsome for an aspiring historian, the mysterious new visitor often seems as though he got lost on his way to a Patricia Highsmith novel. While much of the film feels stretched between the feverish eros of Bertolucci, the budding warmth of Mia Hansen–Løve, and the affected stoicism of James Ivory (who, at 88, has a co-writing credit on this screenplay), a thin shadow of suspense creeps along the outer edges of each frame, priming viewers for a very different kind of pivot than the one Guadagnino deployed during the third act of “A Bigger Splash.”Elio and Oliver grow closer as the summer sinks toward its dog days — at first they share only a bathroom, the skinny adolescent looking at his unpredictable new friend as though he can’t understand how they could be the same species, let alone be interested in the same thing. But commonalities and semi-secrets soon emerge: For one thing, they’re both Jews in a land of goys. Oliver, no doubt aware that he looks like the winner of Hitler’s master race, wears a Star of David necklace underneath his shirt, a barely visible emblem of his otherness. The Perlmans, on the other hand, are what Elio’s father describes as “Jews of discretion” (one of the funnier lines in a movie that’s laced with a sharp sense of humor), but the strangeness of celebrating Hanukkah within spitting distance of Vatican City eventually makes its mark.As the film progresses, Elio and Oliver begin to share more tangible things: Bike rides, errant touches, an unknown desire to have sex with one another (that last one is a biggie). Crucially, however, Elio is as conflicted about his own passions as he is those of the boy next door. His tastes are molten and volatile — he performs the same piano piece in a wildly different style every time he plays it, much to Oliver’s amused frustration. When he’s not busy gawking at his brawny infatuation, he’s enthusiastically trying to deflower the French girl down the street (Esther Garrell, of the New Wave Garrells), who wears her wardrobe of summer dresses like she’s trying to shame away the other seasons.Telling this story with the same characteristically intoxicating capriciousness that has come to define his work, Guadagnino doesn’t dwell on looks of questionably requited longing. He’s not Todd Haynes and — with the possible exception of a long take mid-movie that follows the two leads around a fountain and endows the space between them with a palpably physical sense of attraction and denial — he doesn’t try to be. Instead, he stays attuned to the raw energy of trying to feel someone out without touching them, of what it’s like to live through that one magical summer where the weather is the only part of your world that doesn’t change every day.Rippling with nervously excited piano compositions and shot with immeasurable sensuality by Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” and “Arabian Nights”), “Call Me By Your Name” is a full-bodied film that submits all of its beauties to the service of one simple truth: The more we change, the more we become who we are. Like the Latin prefixes that Oliver and Mr. Perlman trace back to their roots or the antiquated artworks that resonate because of how much the world has changed since their creation, Elio learns that growth — however wild or worrisome it might seem at the time — is the greatest gift that he can give himself.Watching him slowly come to that realization is an unforgettable and enormously moving experience because of how the film comes to realize it, too. Guadagnino lives for the climactic portion of this story, when feelings are finally transmuted into action and Oliver’s true nature breaks through the marble bust of his body (Hammer’s warmth in these scenes is extraordinary). The details are best experienced for yourself, but it’s safe to say that movie lives up to the book’s steamy reputation, and Chalamet and Hammer throw themselves at each other with the clumsy abandon of first love. Growingly increasingly divorced from its source material as it goes along, the final beats of Guadagnino’s adaptation galvanize two hours of simmering uncertainty into a gut-wrenchingly wistful portrait of two people trying to find themselves before it’s too late. As Elio’s father puts it in a heart-stopping monologue that every parent might want to memorize for future use: “Don’t make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything. What a waste.”Leaving us with one of the gorgeous new songs that Sufjan Stevens wrote for the film, this achingly powerful story — a brilliant contribution to the queer cinema canon — breathes vibrant new life into the answer that Marguerite of Navarre gave to her own question. “I would counsel all such as are my friends to speak and not die,” she said, “for ’tis a bad speech that cannot be mended, but a life lost cannot be recalled.”Grade: A“Call Me By Your Name” premiered in the Premieres section of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics will release it later this year.
