As the release of 2017 movies slowly (and mercifully) comes to an end, each review provides an opportunity to reflect deeper and deeper on the year that was. I’ve mentioned a few times in recent reviews that 2017 has, by far, been the worst year for movies since the inception of this blog back in 2010. Some movies may finish at the end of my year Top 5, but they wouldn’t even come close to finishing in my Top 10 in any other year. Unfortunately, for this review, Luca Guadagnino’s (A Bigger Splash, I Am Love) Call Me By Your Name did not benefit from a weak 2017. This movie has done very well with the critics and likely will earn multiple Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet – Lady Bird, Interstellar), Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as potential nominations for Best Supporting Actor (Armie Hammer – Nocturnal Animals, The Birth of a Nation) and Michael Stuhlbarg (The Shape of Water, Arrival), Best Original Song, and others, it still didn’t captivate me in the way I expected it to. For those expecting this to be the most excellent movie about gay love since Brokeback Mountain, you may be disappointed. Brokeback Mountain is an A+ movie. Guadagnino’s (A Bigger Splash, I Am Love) Call Me By Your Name is a B at best.
I don’t want to give too much away, but since the synopsis of this movie includes what I’m about to say, I feel okay saying it. The movie’s premise creeped me out in ways that made me feel slightly uncomfortable. It wasn’t that this was a love story between two men. I appreciate gay love as much as I do straight love. Love is love. And when it’s portrayed on screen in a meaningful and believable way, it is absolutely breathtaking. That was one of the reasons that Brokeback Mountain was so great. You had the sweeping landscapes of Wyoming and Texas as the backdrop. You had director Ang Lee and actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger all at the top of their games. Sprinkle in Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway, two of our generation’s greatest actresses, who were starting their movie careers, and you had an instant recipe for success. Crash (a fabulous movie in its own right) knocking off Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture still goes down as one of the greatest upsets ever.
This movie didn’t resonate with me nearly the same way as Brokeback Mountain because of the age differential between the two lovers. A fabulous Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet – Lady Bird, Interstellar) is one of a few names in the four acting categories this year that you have not heard of. And it wasn’t like Perlman emerged late in the race. He was a frontrunner all along. It’s very interesting to see Perlman and fellow newcomer Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) interspersed in the Best Actor category with heavyweights Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread), Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq.), and finally Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), who has zero shot of not winning this year’s award. Pelman also had great supporting performances. Both Hammer and Stuhlbarg just missed getting nominated for Best Supporting Actor. One might argue that neither man was nominated because they effectively canceled each other out. My vote would have been for Hammer, but as I look at the list of the five actors who did get nominated, I can’t find one who I would replace. I think the Academy got it right in this category. Best Actress and Best Supporting Actors are chalked full of top-notch performances.
In any case, let’s go back to my reason for not loving the movie. I enjoyed the gorgeous setting very much. The year is the summer of 1983. Elio (Chalamet) is an intelligent, mature, cocky, and insecure 17-year-old American-Italian. How was he able to effectively capture each of these four very different characteristics? Well, that’s the reason why he’s a Best Actor nominee. I’d put him third on the list of nominees, behind just Oldman and Day-Lewis. Elio and his father (Stuhlbarg) and mother Annella (Amira Casar – The Forbidden Room) travel to Northern Italy each summer where his father, a professor of archaeology, has a different graduate student come every summer to the family villa and help with his research.
This year’s student, Oliver (Hammer), attends Columbia University and is set to spend his summer helping the professor edit his manuscript. My biggest problem with the film lies here. Oliver is some seven or eight years older than Elio, and, at times, the age gap is even more significant. Now, there is nothing wrong with dating someone seven years older or younger than someone else, but there is something inherently wrong when one of those two people is a minor. Even though the age of consent in Italy in 1983 was 14 years old, it still felt uncomfortable watching a grown man be intimate with a young person.
Ironically, in the wake of his very own scandal, a lot in Call Me By Your Name reminded me of Kevin Spacey and Mena Suvari in 1999’s American Beauty. I was a little more uncomfortable with Call Me By Your Name even though Spacey was much older than Suvari than Hammer was to Chalamet simply because Chalamet’s character felt much younger. Yes, he was intelligent and mature, but his face looked young, his mannerisms felt young, and his reactions (jealousy, anger, frustration, sadness) to situations felt much rawer.
Chalamet stole the show here with his much more seasoned counterpart. And Guadagnino was brilliant with his direction. He took his time developing his characters and telling his story. There was little to do in Northern Italy in the summer of 83. There are times when we, as audience members, feel as bored as the characters do. But it is this pacing that drives the movie. There is no hurry to create dynamic characters and memorable moments. Elio and Oliver read, swim, play the piano, talk about art, pick fruit, ride their bicycles, and enjoy ice cream (or is it gelato?) as their friendship, with an underlying tone, really begins to manifest itself. Elio is quick-witted and cocky at times. But underneath his boastfulness (“I could have had sex with her last night,” Elio tells Oliver) and his facade, he is an awkward, emotional, and self-conscious child who is easily influenced and one whose heart can break with each rejection he receives. But what Guadagnino does with the material (based on the novel by James Ivory) is to avoid taking it to the extreme. It’s the anti-Blue is the Warmest Color if you will. There is a closeness, yes. There is intimacy, for sure. But what happens physically between the two men takes place off-screen. We see the tender moments leading up to it and the ones after it. It was purposeful on the part of Guadagnino, and it worked magnificently.
But I go back to the root problem of the movie. It’s the young, gawky teenage boy with his underdeveloped muscles and a ripeness on his face that shows he’s not close to filling out physically, and this tall, exquisite, and confident American who, seemingly, doesn’t have a problem in the world. So even after we come to discover that he is gay, we still don’t know why he’s not out there hooking up with tall, exquisite, and confident European men rather than this young boy. This is where it really starts to feel creepy (at least to me and a few others I talked to). But Oliver isn’t entirely to blame. He’s not the one doing the chasing. It’s quite the opposite. After Elio and Oliver dance around each other, some even get on each other’s nerves (purposefully or maybe not), and at times, they can’t help but grow close.
There isn’t anything else to do. Guadagnino illustrates that over and over. The two have nothing to do except spend time with each other in their free time. We don’t see them reveal their true feelings for each other until an hour into this movie. And while you do sense their need for each other from a sexual standpoint (there aren’t a ton of prospects out there for either individual), it feels powerful. There is a connection between the two, but it doesn’t feel like true love. It doesn’t even feel like a fling, which is what Guadagnino is shooting for by placing the entire film in the timeframe of a single summer. It feels like Elio has a crush on Oliver and will do anything for this older, attractive person to notice him. It feels like Oliver knows this and doesn’t want to give in to his temptations; he knows he can get what he wants from Elio and move on at any time without any emotional attachments. I know that isn’t how I was supposed to feel, but that’s how I did feel. Again, this was no Brokeback Mountain. It wasn’t even close. It was far more like Lone Scherfig’s fabulous An Education.
Ultimately, is Call Me By Your Name worthy of its four Academy Award nominations? Maybe. I had read in a few places where it could have earned quite a few more. It doesn’t have a chance to win any of his four nominations. It might have an outside chance of winning Best Adapted Screenplay. There was the talk of Stuhlbarg getting a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but not Hammer. To me, that was ridiculous. Except for one standout scene at the movie’s end, Elio’s dad offered nothing special.
Hammer, however, brought the best out in Chalamet. He helped make him confident but insecure. He helped make him resistant but susceptible. Hammer brought out the performance of Chalamet’s career. Could he make it back to acting’s greatest stage one day? Of course, he could. But there are plenty of actors who got nominated for an Oscar at a young age and then never sniffed an Academy Award again. However, the Academy awarded the year’s five best supporting actor performances with Oscar nominations. But if there could have been a sixth, I don’t know why it wouldn’t have been Hammer. He was fabulous and was working with material that would have made many actors uncomfortable (because of such a young person that he was pursuing sexually. But the performances of all three men (especially Hammer) will open the doors for future roles.
Plot 7.5/10
Character Development 8.5/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 8.5/10
Directing 8.5/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 7.5/10
Hook and Reel 8/10
Universal Relevance 7.5/10
82.5%
B-
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- If Beale Street Could Talk
- Blue Is The Warmest Color
- Her
- Brokeback Mountain
- Portrait Of A Lady On Fire