Classic Film Review #15: Call Me by Your Name (2017)

Available on: Netflix

Luca Guadagnino’s sensual coming-of-age tale is laudable for many a reason – chief amongst them being the most creatively unedifying use of a peach I’ve ever seen – and certainly can be considered one of cinema’s most authentic documentations of the pain and insecurities of youth.

Serving as the final instalment in the director’s ‘Desire’ trilogy, Call Me by Your Name is an unashamedly erotic film that perfectly depicts the experience of finding and losing love, which is of course all the more excruciating when experienced in the throes of one’s formative years. We experience this aching through the eyes of Elio (Timothée Chalamet), a ‘too cool for school’ type who spends his summers lounging around his academic parents’ idyllic palazzo in northern Italy.

Elio’s world is upended by the arrival of Oliver (Armie Hammer), a charming research assistant who is to spend the summer working alongside Elio’s father Samuel (Michael Stuhlbarg). The two establish a rapport which gradually evolves over the film’s runtime, eventually transforming into the sort of summer tryst that always seem that bit more thrilling when viewed on the silver screen. Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom do a stellar job of depicting the pair’s irrepressible lust for one another, effortlessly combining subtle touches (such as the relentless heat of the Italian sun) with more overt acts of affection (see said peach scene).

Chalamet and Hammer are naturally pivotal to the film, and do a sterling job as two lovers who, despite the strength of their feelings, are not quite ready for one another. But a word ought to go to the ever dependable Stuhlbarg, who essentially steals the show when delivering a moving speech to his son during the film’s final throes. It truly is one of those lump-in-throat moments that only the most emotionally affecting of pictures can deliver.