SUMMER OF LOVE
Italian-set story is a romance to remember
I N a week when many of us will take dutiful trips to visit family, consider a two-hour vacation: “Call Me by Your Name” is a dreamscape of sunshine, kindness, sensuality and music. Plus, leafy orchards, al fresco dinner parties, charming Italian town squares — and the agony and ecstasy of first love.
Based on the novel by André Aciman, the film is set in 1983 in northern Italy. Graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer) is spending a summer residency studying GrecoRoman antiquities at the home of a professor (Michael Stuhlbarg), his wife (Amira Casar) and their 17-year-old son, Elio (Timothée Chalamet). Their villa is academic shabby-chic, with art and books on every surface, doors banging and window sills peeling, and even an old-fashioned dinner bell.
Oliver is the archetypal American, cocky and athletic; the strapping Hammer is perfect for the part. Elio, slighter and more introverted, is a skilled pianist who initially rolls his eyes at their brash houseguest — “the usurper,” he mutters to his girlfriend Marzia, (Esther Garrel) as Oliver is given Elio’s bedroom — but can’t hide a growing fascination.
The professor and Oliver’s work with ancient statues is slyly juxtaposed with the lithe, nearconstantly shirtless young men’s bodies, subconsciously posing for one another. Chalamet is a virtuoso of subtle expression; his face flits through a whirlwind of emotions every time Oliver’s nearby, masked by a desperate attempt to play it cool. Despite their seven-year age difference, the two are well-matched intellectually, and at times Elio seems the more urbane, casually shifting among English, French and Italian. When they finally touch, under Oliver’s guise of “just bros” athleticism, the sensuality in the air spikes off the charts. One particular scene that’s gained some advance notoriety involves masturbation and a peach; it’s juicy in every way, a gently kinky ode to Elio’s blossoming sexuality.
Director Luca Guadagnino (“I Am Love”) filmed in Crema, the Italian town he lives in, and you can feel his love for the place: The joy of plunging into an icy pond on a hot day, stopping at a random country house to ask for a glass of water, old men playing cards in the local bar. It’s all set to a rapturous, wideranging soundtrack: classical piano, the Psychedelic Furs and bittersweet new songs from Sufjan Stevens.
For all the transcendent moments between the lovers — and the actors truly have a smoldering chemistry — the most indelible scene may be Stuhlbarg’s speech to his son about savoring the joy and grief of love. Call this movie by its name: Masterpiece.