"Call Me By Your Name" – an LGBT+ must see
Andre Aciman’s novel, Call Me By Your Name, is a modern gay literature classic. Now, the movie of the same name is moving toward release in New York and Los Angeles November 24.
The film, starring Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer, has been wowing the film festival circuit since it premiered at Sundance in January.
“Directed by Italian dream weaver Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love, A Bigger Splash), the film is a swirling wonder, a film about coming of age, about the secrets of youth, the magic of summer, the beauty of Italy,” according to Richard Lawson, for Vanity Fair.com.
In 1983, the son of an American professor is enamored by the graduate student who comes to study and live with his family in their northern Italian home. Together, they share an unforgettable summer full of music, food and romance that will forever change them.
Elio, played by Chalamet, is the son. “Elio is intellectually beyond-his-years, a confident and curious kid who nonetheless feels woefully ignorant, or inexperienced, in one crucial field,” Lawson continued.
“It’s summer, and Elio is 17, so obviously that field is love and sex. Elio is handsome, a beanpole topped with a thicket of dark curls, so he’s got the interest of some French girls staying nearby. He’s interested in them too, but is not pulled to them in the same way that he’s drawn inextricably to Oliver, the 20-something grad student boarding at Elio’s family’s house while he works with Elio’s father. Oliver is played by Armie Hammer.
“Elio’s attraction to Oliver - and Oliver’s to Elio - is laid out delicately by Guadagnino, who adapted Aciman’s book with Walter Fasano and none other than Director James Ivory (whose Maurice is nodded to throughout).”
Maurice was E. M. Forster’s great novel about love between two men at turn-of-the-20th century England.
“Guadagnino gives Call Me By Your Name the faded vibrancy of an old postcard, of a treasured memory. There’s a gentleness, a quietness tempering all the intense surges of feeling rippling between Elio and Oliver. It’s an exquisitely composed film, blessed by terrific performances and perfectly scored by a selection of classical compositions and a pair of new songs by Sufjan Stevens,” Lawson concluded.
The film has been so well received in festivals, and in the buzz leading up to its late November release, that Guadagnino is planning to do a sequel to the film in 2020.
“I want to do a sequel because Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel – they are all gems,” Guadagnino told Indiewire.com at a film festival.
“The texture we built together is very consistent. We created a place in which you believe in the world before them.
“They are young but they are growing up. If I paired the age of Elio in the film with the age of Timothée, in three years’ time Timothée will be 25 as would Elio by the time the second story was set.”
There has already been talk about Call Me By Your Name receiving nominations for the Oscars. It has been nominated for Best Picture by Gotham Awards, giving the picture an early award season boost.
Like Brokeback Mountan years ago, Call Me By Your Name sounds like a ‘must see’ for fans eager for LGBT+ themed movies!
Copyright The Gayly – November 19, 2017 @ 7:10 a.m. CST.