Call Me by Your Name

Two people falling for each other. They are both men. One is 17, another one is 24. They are letting this happen well aware their relationship has no future. They allow themselves to feel, knowing that the feeling might last but the relationship won’t. This movie is about love and about pain. About accepting pain and dealing with it. And it’s about love. Love so spontaneous and big and tangible that you want the same for yourself to drown in it. This movie makes you think of the summers of your own when you were young and carefree: the scenery, the music, the air. It upset me when I came home still living in this movie and one of my children brushed me off: “Oh, is that the one about those two gay guys?” No, it is not! It’s about two people. And it’s not about sex. It is a movie about emotional intelligence. Like Mr. Perlman said to Elio about Oliver: “He was more than intelligent. What you two had, had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. He was good. You were both lucky to have found each other, because you too are good.”

Here’s the story. Every year, an archeology professor spends his summers with with his wife and son, a 17-year-old Elio, in Northern Italy. Every summer, for six weeks, this professor hires a different graduate student to help him with the paperwork. That year, the assistant is a 24-year-old American named Oliver. Oliver and Elio become attracted to each other. Although the attraction is mutual, Elio makes the first move probably because he is younger and not, yet, afraid to risk. At first, Oliver is reluctant to respond as it might be more obvious to him that they’re opening a wound. But he gives in. Oliver has only three weeks in Italy. Their relationship starts a few weeks into his stay, and there’s really no room for it: Oliver works, there’re constantly people around, and they both don’t want make their connection public. Without discussions and questions, Elio’s parents feel both: the love and the pain. For the last three days of Oliver’s stay, they arrange a trip for Oliver and Elio to get away. In the end, all what these two people had for their — as it turned out to be lifelong — attraction was three days.

This movie is based on the book by André Aciman. Usually, I try to finish the book before the movie but here I could n’t hold. Luca Guadagnino has been on my radar since 2009 and “I am Love.” I dragged Tom to watch his other one — “The Bigger Splash” — a remake of 1969 “La Piscine” with Romy Schneider and Alain Delon. In one of his interviews, Luca called his three movies a trilogy of desire even thought there’s no relationship between them besides maybe his esthetics. The first one is about a Russian woman married into Italian wealth, who breaks the rule by trying to find her own identity and on this road falling in love with her son’s friend and losing everything she had. The second one is about two couples — a father-daughter in questionable relationship and a voiceless rockstar-boyfriend — whose paths cross, with the father and the rock star having a history, and the other two living unfulfilled. In that same interview, Luca said that “Call Me by Your Name” would be the last one in this trilogy and then he’ll move on. Obviously, I was counting days. We watched it on the first day of its release from the third row extreme right. And we sat there through the credits getting ourselves together to return back to the routine. And credits in this movie are like in no other…

This was one occasion when the movie did not ruin the book. I am not going to go into the cinematography which was superb. Nor will I say anything about the acting as it’s not possible to imagine anyone else in these parts and all main characters got their nominations. But the movie covers only the first half of the book. And the second part is the best part. The movie ends with Oliver’s departure but, in the book, they do meet three more times: on Christmas of the year they met and 15 and 20 years later since that year. That I am not going to spoil. When I was finishing the book in the wee hours of one morning, Tom woke up to me crying.

“Look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.”