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To quote one of my favorite musicals, Falsettos: “Love can tell a million stories”. Across fiction and real life, relationships look different for everyone and often represent certain stages in your life. Even when they seem problematic or cause heartache, I believe they come for a reason.
Call Me By Your Name is probably one of the most controversial examples of this philosophy. For those who aren’t familiar, it tells the story of Elio, a teenage boy living in Italy in the 1980s who develops an emotional attachment to Oliver, Elio’s father’s graduate intern who’s visiting for the summer.
I say it’s controversial because this film has a complicated legacy. Not only does it feature a significant age-gap relationship between two men, but Oliver is played by Armie Hammer, who has his own set of scandalous issues. Even Timothée Chalamet fans are split on his work after his massive persona shift during his promotion of Marty Supreme. However, I think this film is a prime example of how to do a slow-burn romance correctly and what it’s like to experience true, genuine love for the first time.
For starters, this is a beautiful movie to watch. The lush cinematography of Italian nature couples beautifully with a gorgeous and devastating soundtrack that includes a few Sufjan Stevens songs as well as a practical classic in my house, “Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs.
It’s safe to say that I miss this era of Chalamet. While I’ve seen Little Women (2019) more, his performance as Elio is absolutely heartbreaking and fascinating to watch. To have carried this movie at such a young age, I understand why he is hailed as one of the recent “greats.”
I’m often cursed with “film-major brain,” which causes me to notice things happening on a deeper level while watching a movie for the first time. One of those things is how this film is edited, which is where the slow-burn aspect comes in. Most of this movie consists of gorgeous cinematography and Elio’s yearning. However, when Elio and Oliver are freely spending time alone together, it happens over three days that span ten minutes of the 130-minute runtime. Oliver even comments on this, mentioning “all the wasted time.”
The last element worth mentioning is the ending, where Elio’s father (played expertly by Michael Stuhlbarg) lectures Elio after Oliver leaves. It’s done quietly and subtly, yet I had to stop the movie because I realized I had been crying. There are too many beautiful lines in this monologue to pull out and quote here (I highly recommend watching the whole scene here), but the movie has some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever heard, perfectly capturing the complicated and often sad feelings that come with forming a deep emotional attachment.
These last few minutes are when the purpose of the movie hit. This speech, the age gap, and the lack of time spent together are there to create and emphasize an unrealistic, but highly fantasized and desired expectation of what a relationship should look like. This is Elio’s first time experiencing feelings like this, so of course it arrives in a grand, yet ultimately unobtainable way.
Call Me By Your Name is mandatory viewing, not just for film geeks, but for people who yearn to experience a beautiful expression of innocent, early love and the pain of first heartbreak.
Get the tissues ready and enjoy!
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