Elio lives a charmed life. He is the teenage son of a graduate
professor named Mr. Perlman and a mother who apparently inherited a
Tuscan estate. Every summer the family vacations for three summer’s
in an Italian paradise. They eat outside underneath olive trees, food
served by the ancient stewards of the estate. There is wine and fish
caught fresh from the nearby lake. There are teenage girls in the
town that have the care-free summer off as well. Mr. Perlman seems
like he is the friends of the most interesting people in the
countryside. They come over for dinner and have conversations about
highly intellectual topics. Mr. Perlman himself is an expert in
ancient languages. Elio’s hobbies are swimming, flirting, and
transcribing musical compositions. Really, the hardest thing about
this movie is trying to shun the crushing sense of envy one feels
while watching it. This looks and feels like the world’s best
summer vacation.
The only thing that could possible count as some sort of conflict in
this story is a forbidden love situation that also turns out as well
as things possibly could have. Mr. Perlman, played by Michael
Stuhlbarg, invites one of his graduate students to spend the summer
with him as a research aide. This summer it is Oliver, played by
Armie Hammer, a tall strapping late twenty-something. Elio, played by
Timothee Chalamet, little by little falls in love with him. It is
1983, so homosexuality is still a concern to these particular
characters. A 2017 audience will be more concerned about the fact
that Elio is underage. This thorny issue the movie deftly handles
with something akin to grace.
Most importantly, almost the entire story is told from the point of
Elio, which provides the character with a high degree of agency.
Timothee Chalamet here provides a sublime performance that has
deservedly garnered him an Oscar nomination. It is a tricky feat to
pull off, because the character cannot be any more articulate than a
teenager and must necessarily convey a certain non-understanding of
his homosexual feelings that apparently he was unaware of before this
particular summer. He wants Oliver but at the same time understands
the awkward position he is putting the older man in. He is also
obviously nervous about revealing his feelings when there are so many
good reasons why he would be rejected. To count the prospective ones
off: Oliver believes it would damage his relationship with Mr.
Perlman, Oliver does not have reciprocal feelings for Elio, Oliver
has reciprocal feelings but does not believe he should act on them
because of either a stance against homosexuality or Elio’s age, or
Oliver likes Elio but not in a sexual way because he is not a
homosexual himself.
How Elio comes out to Oliver is a tour de force scene of movie
directing. Director Luca Guadagnino blocks the scene in front of a
World War I memorial in the old Italian town’s square. It is the
middle of the day, the square is deserted. The camera watches the
action far away in a long shot. Oliver and Elio start the scene
talking about the memorial. Elio stays on one side while Oliver walks
around it on the other side. Although we hear Elio, we never see his
face. The conversation switches from the memorial to an almost
existential conversation about knowing things and wanting other
people to know about the things you know. Almost nothing is actually
said. There are no close-ups. But the amount of information conveyed
to the audience is enormous. It is one of the best directed scenes of
the year.
The movie’s theme is actually summarized in a scene near the end by
Mr. Perlman. In most other movies, such an obvious exposition of
“meaning” would not kindly looked upon. But this movie by that
time had earned such a speech by living it out in real time for two
hours. And Mr. Perlman, an educated and sensitive man, is actually a
character well qualified to give it. This is the experience of “Call
Me By Your Name” in a nutshell: A lot of scenes handled with grace
and sensitivity that would probably crash and burn in offense and
awkwardness in less qualified movies.
Not that all romances could be shown in this light. I do not believe
a heterosexual romance of this kind would work even with the deftness
of the makers of “Call Me By Your Name”. The closest movie that I
believe has come to it was “Diary of a Teenage Girl” from 2015. I
say that movie was the most similar because it too provided the very
rare level of agency afforded to Elio here. However, it still
concluded that the older man was not a good person. Is it possible
that a movie someday could look on a heterosexual romance like the
one seen in “Call Me By Your Name” and conclude that the older
man is not guilty of something? Maybe, but not yet.
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