REVIEW: CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
There's no witty opener to be found here. I want to be as straightforward and honest about Luca Guadagnino's Call Me by Your Name as Call Me by Your Name was straightforward and honest with me. This is the most piercingly honest depiction of first/falling in/romantic love I have seen in a very long time, perhaps of all time. If I would have postponed my top five list of 2017, this would have surely made the mark. The premise is so simple it begs you to question its gimmick: maybe they're on Mars the whole time? There is nothing deceiving about this film, and its pureness in relation to its characters is what makes it one of the better I've seen in the past decade.
Oliver (Armie Hammer) comes to stay with Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) as a research assistant for a summer in northern Italy in 1983, along with Perlman's wife Annella (Amira Casar) and son Elio (now Oscar-nominee Timothée Chalamet). The relationship begins: and that's the movie. Spread out leisurely over 132 minutes, and written by film veteran James Ivory, the movie's beginning crawl intoxicatingly invites the reader to come take a vacation, be a fly on the wall, indicated by the laid back intro of "Somewhere in Northern Italy." Along with being the most viscerally romantic, I think this is one of the most calmest movies I've ever seen. When I think of drama, my mind conjures arguments, fights, battles! I don't think anyone in Call Me by Your Name even raises their voice. It would disturb the paradise, the fragile moment these characters exist in. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's cinematography is mesmerizing, capturing serene postcard landscapes and tiny, intimate settings where Elio and Oliver hide away in equal measure.
But one undersung aspect of filmmaking is utilized to perhaps the fullest I've ever seen: lighting. It makes me want to petition the Academy to add this to their list of distinguished film achievements. No film has captured the lighting of love quite the same way. There's no romantic pinks, no spotlights in a dark room. Just quiet, intimate darkness, like when you first made out in your parents' house, and the lights were low, and you knew your partner's parents were coming to pick them up. When Elio is pursuing Marzia (Esther Garrel), a device the film uses to show Elio's lust vs. his love, there are nights when both of his lovers are gone, and he just sits there. A Hollywood film would have his mother pat him on the back, ask him what's wrong. "Oh, nothin'," he would say, and she'd smile knowingly, adding "Someone's got love on the brain!" Here, it's just a glance of pure wanting, bathed in a somber violet, and you know exactly what he's going through.
The dialogue, spoken in the true European fashion of alternating between three languages, is remarkably subtle. Many scenes are played out with minimal dialogue and silence, which, in a lesser movie, would make its aforementioned two hours and twelve minutes feel like a drag. But I was reading Roger Ebert's review of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (these are the things I do with my time) and he mentioned how the film was a "hang-out" movie, the type where he wanted to watch the characters scheme and talk for hours on hours. Jackie Brown is a long movie, even for Tarantino's standards, and it can stand to lose about 20 minutes. But every second in Call Me by Your Name felt invaluable. The mild flirtations, the parental advisories (not the stickers on CD's, but the talks the Perlmans give Oliver), the many swimming ventures: they all add up to a kettle-whistle of boiling romance. Condensing six weeks of raw love into 132 minutes is masterful, and like the plentiful flies that are spotted in the margins of the frame, we're allowed to watch it all unfold. (Fly theory credit to Chris Stuckmann of YouTube fame). Like Ebert, I could've watched these characters drink wine, sunbathe, converse with nutty Italian relatives and bicycle down paths leading to nowhere for hours and hours.
But time flies when you're in love, as Elio realizes. Stuhlbarg delivers an extraordinarily powerful, life-altering monologue, not only to hi onscreen son but to the viewer. Even if it's temporary, love with everything you've got. As the credits rolled and the Sony Pictures logo came up, the entirety of the theater I was in (me and three other people) kept absolutely still. No one stirred, made a sound. We'd all just witnessed an entire relationship before our eyes. But like Mr. Perlman's words of wisdom, I adored Call Me by Your Name while I had it. It's not gay arthouse Oscar bait. It's simply love, and nothing else.
Rating: 4/4 stars
Oliver (Armie Hammer) comes to stay with Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) as a research assistant for a summer in northern Italy in 1983, along with Perlman's wife Annella (Amira Casar) and son Elio (now Oscar-nominee Timothée Chalamet). The relationship begins: and that's the movie. Spread out leisurely over 132 minutes, and written by film veteran James Ivory, the movie's beginning crawl intoxicatingly invites the reader to come take a vacation, be a fly on the wall, indicated by the laid back intro of "Somewhere in Northern Italy." Along with being the most viscerally romantic, I think this is one of the most calmest movies I've ever seen. When I think of drama, my mind conjures arguments, fights, battles! I don't think anyone in Call Me by Your Name even raises their voice. It would disturb the paradise, the fragile moment these characters exist in. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's cinematography is mesmerizing, capturing serene postcard landscapes and tiny, intimate settings where Elio and Oliver hide away in equal measure.
But one undersung aspect of filmmaking is utilized to perhaps the fullest I've ever seen: lighting. It makes me want to petition the Academy to add this to their list of distinguished film achievements. No film has captured the lighting of love quite the same way. There's no romantic pinks, no spotlights in a dark room. Just quiet, intimate darkness, like when you first made out in your parents' house, and the lights were low, and you knew your partner's parents were coming to pick them up. When Elio is pursuing Marzia (Esther Garrel), a device the film uses to show Elio's lust vs. his love, there are nights when both of his lovers are gone, and he just sits there. A Hollywood film would have his mother pat him on the back, ask him what's wrong. "Oh, nothin'," he would say, and she'd smile knowingly, adding "Someone's got love on the brain!" Here, it's just a glance of pure wanting, bathed in a somber violet, and you know exactly what he's going through.The dialogue, spoken in the true European fashion of alternating between three languages, is remarkably subtle. Many scenes are played out with minimal dialogue and silence, which, in a lesser movie, would make its aforementioned two hours and twelve minutes feel like a drag. But I was reading Roger Ebert's review of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (these are the things I do with my time) and he mentioned how the film was a "hang-out" movie, the type where he wanted to watch the characters scheme and talk for hours on hours. Jackie Brown is a long movie, even for Tarantino's standards, and it can stand to lose about 20 minutes. But every second in Call Me by Your Name felt invaluable. The mild flirtations, the parental advisories (not the stickers on CD's, but the talks the Perlmans give Oliver), the many swimming ventures: they all add up to a kettle-whistle of boiling romance. Condensing six weeks of raw love into 132 minutes is masterful, and like the plentiful flies that are spotted in the margins of the frame, we're allowed to watch it all unfold. (Fly theory credit to Chris Stuckmann of YouTube fame). Like Ebert, I could've watched these characters drink wine, sunbathe, converse with nutty Italian relatives and bicycle down paths leading to nowhere for hours and hours.
But time flies when you're in love, as Elio realizes. Stuhlbarg delivers an extraordinarily powerful, life-altering monologue, not only to hi onscreen son but to the viewer. Even if it's temporary, love with everything you've got. As the credits rolled and the Sony Pictures logo came up, the entirety of the theater I was in (me and three other people) kept absolutely still. No one stirred, made a sound. We'd all just witnessed an entire relationship before our eyes. But like Mr. Perlman's words of wisdom, I adored Call Me by Your Name while I had it. It's not gay arthouse Oscar bait. It's simply love, and nothing else.
Rating: 4/4 stars
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