A quiet, yet soulful and sensual summer ...

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 2017)

Film Review: "Call Me By Your Name" is possibly the name of the best film of 2017. I will likely remember this movie more than any other film I saw this year.
Set in the summer of 1983 in a countryside villa in Italy, filmmaker James Ivory ("Maurice;" "A Room with a View;" "The Remains of the Day;" "Howard's End") penned a screenplay, adapted from Andre Acimen's novel, that is truly breathtaking. Intermixing American English, French and Italian, Mr. Ivory carefully crafts a human story.
The main characters are Elio, played by Timothee Chalamet ("Interstellar;" "Lady Bird"), and Oliver, portrayed by Armie Hammer ("The Social Network;" "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.") Elio's father is an eminent professor of archaeology who brings in Oliver, a doctoral student, for the summer to work on his thesis. Bathed in golden sunlight and the ravishing Italian countryside, Elio slowly develops feelings for Oliver.
Director Luca Guadagnino ("I am Love;" "Bertolucci on Bertolucci") triumphs. With only one read through with the actors and shooting most of the film in sequence, Mr. Guadagnino achieves an honesty that is rare on film. Never forced and full of doubt, insecurity, hormones, and missed opportunities, everything about Elio's first love feels like what I remember when I fell in love for the first time. It's a heady experience to be transported back to what it felt like to be in love at 17 or 18 or to remember what it felt like to have a romance that begins in the long afternoons of June and ends when the sun begins to set too early in August.
Mr. Chalamet's performance is without a doubt one of the best of the year. He navigates a quiet, yet soulful and sensual summer with disarming ease. He leads the screen with a confidence equal to Armie Archer's bold American bravado. The gentle, yet fiercely emotional, relationship revealed over the course of the movie is stunning.
I must also note that this is one of those films that makes you feel like you've been on vacation. The cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and attention to detail construct a vivid experience. The charming cobblestone streets, beautiful rocky trails through pine-filled forests, leading to lazy rivers and watering holes are experiential.
This film is pretty perfect. "Call Me By Your Name" is a film where you meet real characters and visit a very distinct place in a very specific year. Winner of the American Film Institute's Best Films of 2017, nominated for 3 Golden Globes, including Best Picture - Drama, and nominated for 6 Independent Spirit Awards. I understand that at the New York Film Festival "Call Me By Your Name" received the longest standing ovation in the festival's history. I hope the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences likes this film as much as I did, because it deserves an Oscar Best Picture nomination.