NY FILM FESTIVAL: Call Me by Your Name

In Richard Wagner’s great work Tristan und Isolde, the lovers in the throes of the most heated passion exchange names. Isolde says she is Tristan, and he appropriates her name as they consummate their love and become one. In the film Call Me by Your Name the two lovers, 17 year old Elio and thirty-something Oliver imitate Wagner’s doomed lovers, passionately borrowing each other’s names in a night of love that climaxes their summertime romance.

The film, based on André Aciman's popular novel, tells the story of the sexual awakening of a teenage boy against the background of a languid summer in Northern Italy in 1983. Elio’s father is an American professor who has invited Oliver, a graduate student academician, to his summer home for a few weeks. Elio and his family are cultural Jews, but Oliver seems to be more in tune with his religion; he wears a gold Star of David on a gold chain around his neck. As Elio and Oliver's relationship grows, Elio finds his childhood Star of David he had discarded long ago, and begins wearing it. A sign that he and Oliver are becoming closer. And closer they do become, as their relationship grows from a summertime fling to a passionate love affair, with their love remaining secret to Elio’s parents, or so he thinks. In an extraordinary scene, Elio’s father, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, tells his son to be proud of the time he had with Oliver, and to not be ashamed of it.  He also confesses that he came close to having a similar kind of experience, but life’s social mores held him back.

This has been the most popular film at this year's New York Film Festival thus far.  The end of the film was greeted with a standing ovation by a sold-out audience, a rare event at this venue.  It is a well-made film with many outstanding performances. Armie Hammer as Oliver and Timothée Chalamet as Elio possess the right amount of chemistry to enable this story to feel believable. Young Mr. Chalamet is particularly effective at conveying a complex highly intelligent teenager who reads books, transcribes music, and plays the piano like a prodigy; all while being a horny sexually active teenager who juggles his affair with Oliver alongside a fling with a French girlfriend.  Director Luca Guadagnino handles James Ivory's screenplay with finesse.  A particularly fine moment in the film is when the lovers consummate their relationship, the camera pans away from them, coming to rest on a fertile tree outside the window of their bedroom.

There is early Oscar buzz about this film, especially when it comes to newcomer Chalamet, whose expressive face graces the screen during the long last shot of the film.  A memorable shot in a memorable film.