This love-coming-of-age drama was based on the Andréa Aciman's novel of the same name, and the screenplay is a credible but simultaneous, unique and authentic film adaptation by famous director and screenwriter James Ivory. Although, in the novel, the main character in his monologues refers to past events, Guadagnino decides on an unbiased position in which characters are as surprised as viewers, thus creating a story of hidden and silent love, but big enough to go with the classics.
Call me by your name, located "somewhere in northern Italy", reminds viewers that a small part of the paradise wrapped in fascinating nature and sun, which will eventually hide euphoric and impatient love among trees, doesn't need to be defined.
The centerpiece of the plot is seventeen-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) whose parents are charismatic and sophisticated couple of intellectuals who are in love with art and literature, and in the same spirit they raised a son who deals with copying and processing of classical music. His father (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a distinguished professor and archaeologist dealing with the study of ancient culture and art, and the mother (Amira Casar) a translator who translates and reviews texts from classical literature.
Elio's family is spending summer in a 17th-century villa located in a small Italian town, and his father hosts one young scientist every year to work together on archaeological research. The film begins with the arrival of young and attractive American scientist Oliver (Armie Hammer), who will spend the summer with the family.
In this idyllic setting, Oliver found a friend in Elio, whom the family assigned as a guide through a new environment, so the two young men spend almost all their free time together losing themselves in the nature or on the streets of a romantic city, and often in the rooms and garden luxurious villas where they expressed feelings of mutual admiration and intimacy.
In one of the first days of his stay, Oliver's and Elio's father, began discussing the origin of the word "apricot", which, as an inevitable summer fruit, permeates the film as a hanging object, and after Oliver impressively observes that the origin of the word carries the meaning of "premature", it becomes a symbol of concealed sexuality as it will eventually come to tell Elio in the story of growing up.
Call me by your name portrays the path of friendship that was born out of love for art and humorous conversational diction, and matured in the exchange of shy views passing through the shared bathroom to ultimately turn into hidden and impatient love. This feeling of impatience will mark Elio's adolescent insecurity and enthusiasm and joint efforts to perpetuate their sophisticated sensuality whose main antagonist becomes a limited time for love.
Guadagnino's careful and pedantic selection of scenery, in which almost every element participates in the creation of film poetics, insists on nature, and loves the story of the lyrical elements of melancholy and longing. The extraordinary power of this love story is it's subtlety and intimacy, but also the possibility that, despite the fact that it's a secret, it becomes loud enough to be felt and understood.
Lovers who go against the circumstances and the times don't want to be dramatic, and their love becomes layered and enthusiastic, impatient, and real enough to be able to identify the infinite number of first love whose taste ties to those who had the chance to experience it. The combination of romantic and idyllic motives with the motives of music, body and desire Call me by your name in a way isolates from the everyday reality that the summer break will finally have to come to an end.
The end of Elio's and Oliver's relationship is not a moment in which feelings begin to fade, regardless of whether we will understand it as a continuation of love or the beginning of what was born out of it. Emotions that have so far signified passion and affection are not necessarily transformed into bad memories.
These are words of understanding and wisdom that at the very end of film is transmitted by Elio's father, reminding him that by suppressing pain and grief he will also suppresses the memories that will ultimately remain with him. Such a comforting gesture of parental empathy and gentleness is an ideal reminder of the importance of family support and patience.
