A "Must See" coming-of-age tale!

Rating: 9/10 (22 February 2018)

It isn't taboo-busting which makes Call Me By Your Name a deserving must see; it deserves a "look" because, as great cinema should, it beautifully conveys the universality of a specific human story.
It's a coming-of-age film, but one that achieves an unusual emotional immediacy. In northern Italy in 1983, 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) begins a relationship with visiting Oliver (Armie Hammer), his father's research assistant, with whom he bonds over his emerging sexuality, their Jewish heritage, and the beguiling Italian landscape.
Depictions of same-sex relationships have been deemed Oscar-worthy before (Philadelphia in 1993; Brokeback Mountain in 2005 and, of course, last year's Moonlight), but this film goes further by allowing Elio and Oliver to escape the usually devastating consequences that cinema dishes out to its gay protagonists. Not only is Elio not struck down by a life-limiting illness, persecuted by unjust laws or turned out on the streets, he enjoys the support of a loving, emotionally intuitive family. Michael Stuhlbarg may have missed out on an Oscar nomination for the role of Elio's father, but the speech he gives on heartbreak will surely save audiences years of therapy by enacting the ideal parent figure we all wish we'd had.
"Call Me By Your Name" celebrates the mystery and power of sexuality, and all its attendant danger, exaltation and tenderness. And most importantly it oozes nostalgic melancholy and avoids the cliches in many films about gay love.