Call Me By Your Name

This was our final film: the result of a quick committee discussion after we discovered that it was impossible to find a sing-along version of Beauty and the Beast.

After the reviews of the film I'd read I was keen to see it and was not disappointed, although some members did not attend as they did not approve of the subject matter. I can quite understand why the film topped the  poll of the Guardian Best Films of 2017 in both the UK and USA, and James Ivory's awards for the screenplay are a tribute to grey power everywhere: it certainly did not come across as an old man's film.

Here are my notes:

Call Me by Your Name

USA 2017        132 minutes

Director:          Luca Guadagnino

Starring:            Arnie Hammer, Timothee Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg

Awards and Nominations

• Won Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (James Ivory) and Oscar nominations for Best Actor (Timothee Chalamet), Best Film and Best Original Song
• Won BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay (James Ivory) and BAFTA nominations for Best Actor (Timothee Chalamet), Best Film and Best Director
• A further 80 wins and 189 nominations

“This priority is often overlooked, but pure sensual pleasure is an important part of cinema. So it’s a thrill to see a really outstanding film which provides it, as well as being itself about sensual pleasure – about the desire that precedes it, about an ecstatic submission to love, about the intelligent cultivation of all these things. It is a story of a passionate affair between an older and younger man and reaches out to anyone with a pulse.”

Peter Bradshaw

In the summer of 1983 in Italy Elio (Timothee Chalamet), the son of an ex-pat American academic, spends his time playing classical music, reading and flirting with his friend Marzia. When Oliver (Arnie Hammer) an American graduate student arrives in Italy to take up an internship he begins a relationship with Elio that soon goes beyond friendship.

This multi-award winning film is the end product of a fascinating combination of US and European film-making talent after initial attempts to make it ended in development hell. The film rights to Andre Aciman’s novel had been sold before publication but the producers then spent several years trying to find an appropriate screenwriter and director for the project. Eventually they approached Luca Guadagnino to direct the film but he declined due to pre-existing commitments although he agreed to act as location consultant as the film was to be shot on location in Northern Italy. Guadagnino subsequently suggested that he co-direct the film with James Ivory and Ivory then worked with him on a screenplay before standing down as co-director, a decision which he said resulted from the unwillingness of the financiers to have two directors. Thus Guadagnino directed the film and Ivory became the sole credited screenwriter, and at the age of 89 became the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar.

Guadagnino saw the film as the final instalment of his thematic Desire trilogy following on from I Am Love (2009) (BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Language Film) and A Bigger Splash (2015). He described the film as an “homage to fathers”, referring both to his own father and the directors Jean Renoir, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Bernardo Bertolucci, all of whose films have inspired him.

At its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival the film received a standing ovation followed by a ten minute ovation after its screening at the New York Film Festival. By March 2018 the film had grossed US$ 38.0 million against a production budget of US$3.5 million thus making it the third highest grossing release in 2017 for Sony Pictures Classics. The film also topped The Guardian’s lists of the best films of 2017 both in the UK and the USA.

 Here's the trailer: