DIRECTORLuca Guadagnino
CASTArmie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael
Stuhlbarg, Amira CasarPLOTIt’s the early 1980s. Elio (Chalamet) is living
an idyllic existence in Italy with his parents. One
summer, his charmed life is disturbed by Oliver
(Hammer), who comes to spend six weeks with
the family, helping Elio’s father. They are six
weeks that will change Elio’s life forever.OUT26 DECEMBER
RATEDM/132 MINS
★★★★★CALL ME BY
YOUR NAME
VERDICT A fi lm that’s at once light, joyful
and emotionally devastating, with deeply
affecting central performances. A full-
hearted romantic masterpiece.lights the fuse on their attraction, but this
one burns long and slow, not fast and angry.
Based on Andre Aciman’s novel, it’s a romance
overwhelming in its intensity, a heart that
swells until it has to burst.
Elio (Chalamet) is 17 years old and living in
the Italian countryside with his artsy parents
(Stuhlbarg and Casar). Handsome, but more
boyish than he perhaps believes, Elio is confi dent
and smart, liked by everyone who meets him.
Every room he enters is his. But he is thrown
off balance by the arrival of Oliver (Hammer),
a twentysomething who has come to stay to
assist Elio’s father in his work. Oliver looks like
the American ideal distilled into a single man.
And with his charm, looks and presence
outstripped, Elio is immediately transfi xed.
Guadagnino’s telling of the development
of this romance, which changes both parties,
is like the feeling of getting gently drunk. It’s
smooth but a little dizzying. He fi lls every scene
with life. Trees are heavy with fruit; people
are always eating; the chirping of crickets
a constant soundtrack. He thrusts life at you
and wills his characters to live theirs. Long
summer days drift away in a gentle routine of
swimming, cycling and nothing, but each day
that passes with feelings unvoiced is a day lost
— they will never have it back.The screenplay, co-written by James Ivory,
is elegant and full of small surprises. The level of
attention given to even the smallest of characters
means so many of them have an impact even
with minimal screen time — Elio’s brief girlfriend
breaks your heart with a handful of lines. What
few vocal emotional outpourings are present are
earned — a paternal monologue by Stuhlbarg in
the fi nal minutes is as verbose as the fi lm gets
and, good lord, it makes it count (bring tissues).
But much is conveyed in the many silences which
are entrusted to an excellent cast.
Chalamet is the centre and he gives the
kind of performance that immediately sends
you to Google to fi nd out where the hell this kid
came from (he may be familiar from Interstellar
or Homeland). All Elio’s teenage emotions are
raw on Chalamet’s skin. He plays him as a
person still forming, not scared by his feelings
but surprised. In a fi lm in which every
performance is terrifi c, Chalamet makes the rest
look like they’re acting. He alone would make the
fi lm worth watching, but he’s just one of
countless reasons. OLLY RICHARDSIN HIS LAST fi lm, A Bigger Splash, Luca
Guadagnino stuck four attractive people in a
remote holiday home and set off a sort of lustful
Hunger Games, where sex was a weapon in
a battle for dominance. Call Me By Your Name
is similar in its set-up, but the opposite in how
it plays out. It puts two strangers in another
impossibly glamorous, isolated home and
Turner Prize glory would
surely be theirs.