One of the most thought-provoking films, if not the one and only, that were nominated for the 2018 Oscar’s Best Picture is definitely Luca Guadagnino’s newest long film, which is based on the 2007 novel by André Aciman, both titled Call Me by Your Name.
The plot unfolds around the seventeen-year-old Elio (Timothée Chamalet) who is spending the summer of 1983 in the family’s holiday house in Northern Italy. Like every year, his professor father hosts a research assistant for a few weeks: this time it is the good-looking Oliver (Armie Hammer) who’s in his twenties.
Elio, as many boys at his age, seems to be quite confused by his multilingual identity (he talks to his mother in French, to his father in Italian, whereas they speak in English when together), his Jewish origins, and most importantly his emerging sexual identity. This chaos is present in his music, too, as he writes music and plays the piano from time to time. Classical music is a surprising directorial tool to be paralleled with the Italian summer, but it does represent the significance of Elio’s bewildered feelings.
Besides the magnificent Italian landscape with its apricot trees and hidden lakes, the incomparable summer vibes and the relaxed every days of a teenager, the relationship of Elio and Oliver is what immediately grabs the attention of the viewer and keeps it till the very end of the film.
Their relationship grows to be the kind of love we all want to experience,
and Guadagnino managed to communicate it without being considered vulgar by the more conservative viewers. He created a film that not only influence our vision, but our hearing and feelings, too.
In theatres on 8 February.
