Love and privelege

Rating: 8/10 (29 June 2020)

With a screenplay by James Ivory, Luca Guadagnino's film 'Call me by your Name' is an account of a love affair between two Americans, an academic and another academic's son, while the two are staying together in Italy. Although the two lovers are male, and one is barely above the age of consent, neither of these points is the explicit subject of the movie, which instead concentrates on the physicality of love and the strange behaviours we have to learn and manifest in order to express it. On one had, our characters are enormously fortunate (materially, intellectually and in their own good looks); on the other, the way that love (and lust) wrongfoots yet delights them is expertly portrayed, as is the fact that the knowlege that this is a casual relationship cannot completely pre-empt the pain of breakup. This is not a film about the loveless; but there's an honesty in its portrayal that offsets any jealously you might otherwise feel at its protagonists' privelege.