The past year’s critical darlings can be roughly divided into two piles: those that seethe with rage at the sorry state of modern society (Get Out, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, this month’s Loveless), and those that seek to restore your faith in humanity by exuding compassion. Call Me By Your Name is an especially pure expression of the latter approach. Luca Guadagnino’s supremely assured adaptation of André Aciman’s 2007 novel unfolds languorously over the course of the summer of 1983, in and around a sprawling villa in the northern Italian countryside. There,17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) falls head-over-heels for Oliver (Armie Hammer), an older graduate student working for Elio’s archaeology professor father (Michael Stuhlbarg). Chances are you’re well aware of the film’s most notorious scene, in which a peach is used by Elio as a masturbatory aid – but, impressively, even this is sensitively handled. For the most part, it’s an intoxicating account ofthe euphoria of first love, refreshingly devoid of the obstacles that so often render queer romance tricky or tragic. Elio’s progressive parents barely raise an eyebrow upon catching wind of the relationship, while word of the AIDS epidemic has yet to cast a dark cloud over these sun-kissed shores. Its particular vision of an earthly idyll maybe a little bourgeois for some tastes, but I for one was utterly seduced.
Call Me By Your Name | Directed by Luca Guadagnino (Italy,US, Brazil, France 2017) with Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer. Starts March 1.
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