Summer of love

Rating: 6/10 (5 February 2018)

Luca Guadagnino has made a leisurely paced tender gay love story. It is adapted by James Ivory who touched on gay themes in films such as Maurice that Ivory directed. The village summer holiday setting also reminded me of Before Midnight, people eating alfresco, drinking wine and getting into discussions about art or relationships.
Set in the summer of 1983 in Northern Italy. Professor Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) is living in an idyllic house as he researches Greco-Roman artifacts. Each year he invites an intern, this summer Oliver (Arnie Hammer) arrives from America, he is 24 years old, clever, casual was easy going manner charms everyone around him. Both Pearlmans and Oliver are Jews. While Oliver wears a star of David, the Pearlmans are a bit more discrete in Italy. However they are a cultured family.
The Pearlman's 17 year old son Elio (Timothee Chalamet) is musically gifted and like the rest of the family speaks several languages. Although Oliver easily finds it easy to get girls, while Elio rather gawkily tries to relate to them, as the summer wears on both become attracted to each other. Maybe rather awkwardly at first but it becomes more passionate.
It is a sexual awakening for Elio, sowing of wild oats for Oliver, his last blush of youth. Elio's parents suspect that their is something blossoming between the two and tacitly approve of it. This is not a film that wants to cast eternal damnation to the protagonists, even though for Elio the ending is bittersweet. As the summer ends he knows Oliver will return to America.
Call Me by Your Name is a literate film, it is slow, it is awkward, at times sensual.