A hand dares to reach out. The camera moves in as skin touches skin. We experience the tremor that touch elicits many times in Call Me by Your Name (2017), but all the more intensely when director Luca Guadagnino frames this gesture up close – notable in a film that truly vibrates in its wide shots. In the first of these sequences we see Oliver’s (Armie Hammer) hand land on Elio’s (Timothée Chalamet) bare shoulder. Oliver has paused a game of volleyball to snatch a water bottle from Elio that’s intended for someone else. But the camera is mostly interested in what Oliver is doing with his other hand – isolating it from the rest of Oliver’s body as he attempts to give Elio a massage. It’s an action that surprises, confuses, and arouses Elio. Apart from shaking hands when they are introduced, it’s the first real physical contact between the two men’s bodies, and the first step towards shrinking the physical space between them. Oliver, as he later explains, is touching Elio to show that he likes him. But Elio, despite feeling many things and wanting to know what’s in the American graduate student’s head, misreads this sign.
Much later, when they are on the threshold of becoming lovers, a close-up on Elio’s and Oliver’s hands sparks an even more powerful frisson. When Elio joins Oliver at midnight he finds him on the balcony outside their bedrooms and stands beside him, at a slight distance. The camera frames their hands side-by-side; then Oliver’s hand reaches out to close the space between them again. When he rests his hand gently on top of Elio’s, neither Elio nor the audience misreads the earth-shaking significance of this gesture. Elio now understands how Oliver uses touch to express himself. “I’m glad you came,” Oliver confirms; but his touch says more. Oliver’s hand on Elio’s speaks of desire and absolute acceptance. It says that Oliver wants Elio as much as Elio wants him, and that he wants him to stay right where he is.
Each film creates its own language. Call Me by Your Name’s language foregrounds tactility via images of bare skin, cooling water, and curvaceous, fecund fruits. In this intoxicating, immersive world of sun-kissed, sweating bodies, touch is explicitly sensual and pleasurable. Guadagnino’s history of linking food and sex in both I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015) finds full expression here too, but more importantly, touch is Elio’s and Oliver’s primary mode for communicating how they feel about each other. Words repeatedly fail them so they let their bodies do the talking. Call Me by Your Name is a film in which dialogue is used minimally for maximum effect. Its most powerful moments contain little or no speaking at all. This creates an erotic framework in which Elio and Oliver use touch to express their desire, but also curiosity, compassion, adoration, fear, and self-knowledge. Every touch between these young men’s bodies – a hand on a shoulder, a finger tracing lips, a playful, awkward hug, the tangling of toes – delivers a deeply erotic and emotional sensation that extends our understanding of who they are and what they want.
Importantly, Guadagnino isn’t only interested in the moments when Elio and Oliver do touch, but in also making us feel the space between them when they don’t, and how urgent their desire to touch and be touched is. Call Me by Your Name’s erotic tension is inflamed by the long stretches of time in which Elio and Oliver want to touch but are not touching each other at all. Wide shots, low camerawork, and measured pacing stretch out time and space. We see how Elio and Oliver relate to each other’s bodies and how they communicate without words. For much of the film they hold each other at a distance, unsure if or when to move closer. Touch is a physical language for developing sexual intimacy that Elio, in particular, learns to speak and comprehend slowly and awkwardly, then most eloquently, when it’s almost too late.
Both Elio and Oliver have a personal dialogue with touch that they eventually share. From the start of Call Me by Your Name it seems almost unnatural to us that they are not communicating with each other in the same way, sewing another layer of urgency into their unspoken desire. One of Oliver’s earliest physical gestures underlines his tactility. On his first morning at the villa, he descends the stairs and his hand touches a textured wall hanging. Later, at breakfast, this sensual engagement with his surroundings continues. Oliver smashes into a soft-boiled egg and delights at the golden yolk that spurts forth. More than just indicating his ineptitude, this gesture tells us something more, reinforced when Oliver greedily gulps apricot juice and the camera records it, as if it’s Elio’s watchful eye, with both curiosity and reverence. Oliver’s repeated statement, first in relation to the eggs, then in relation to Elio, that, “I know myself,” confirms a voluptuous hunger. Oliver’s ease with touch is reinforced later in the film when his finger traces the lips of the bronze statue brought up at Lake Garda – a gesture that achieves its sensual promise when Oliver repeats it on Elio’s eager mouth prior to their first kiss, and then again when they are in bed together.
Elio is a ‘toucher’ too. The Perlmans regularly show affection through touch: Elio’s parents hug him; he often kisses them. He lives in a nurturing, physically expressive environment. Elio drapes himself over his female friends, Marzia (Esther Garrel) and Chiara (Victoire Du Bois), as a sign of their mostly platonic intimacy. But Oliver’s presence also introduces a more erotic flavour into Elio’s physical expression, which Chalamet conveys via instinctive choices. Elio is nervous and aware of the risks involved in “find[ing] the courage to reach out and touch,” as he jokes in relation to Marzia, the morning after their night swim. Of course the same is true of his timidity around Oliver. But as with all languages, Elio needs to learn its codes and conventions before he can use it. Not yet able to reach out and touch Oliver, Elio starts by touching his things – a book he’s reading, the words he’s written; then daring to enter Oliver’s bedroom, he places that morning’s discarded red swimming shorts over his face and breathes him in.
To amplify the film’s eroticism, Guadagnino arranges Elio’s and Oliver’s moves toward intimacy like he’s playing a concertina – bringing them closer, separating them, and reuniting them again. In addition to heightening the sexual tension, this dynamic is preparing us for their inevitable goodbye. It’s a slow dance towards touching each other’s bodies; a process of figuring out how to do it. Getting together won’t be easy. But the fact that their romance has effectively ended before it has begun – reinforced by the aural cue of the opening of Sufjan Stevens’ “Visions of Gideon” as they walk from the balcony into the bedroom on the night they first have sex – lends a potent urgency to their intimacy when it finally comes. Guadagnino is offering clues from the start about the finite nature of Elio’s and Oliver’s time together. He uses the physical space of the frame to magnify their distance – whether it’s the bathroom that divides their bedrooms or their positions at opposite ends of the garden and pool – and to underline all the spaces that will only wear the trace of Oliver’s body once summer ends.
Despite Elio’s misreading of Oliver’s signal during the volleyball game, Call Me by Your Name’s early sequences see them both almost going out of their way to avoid touching. On Oliver’s first night at the villa, Elio tries to wake him for dinner – instead of reaching out to tap him on the shoulder he opts for dropping a book beside the bed. During meals, in the study, or in the garden, Elio and Oliver are rarely positioned in the same frame. We are aware of their proximity, but also their distance. Guadagnino often holds on Elio’s reaction as Oliver exits a scene. We see that Elio’s trying to make sense of Oliver, but the effect also suggests Oliver is out of reach, and getting further away. In addition, we see them going about their days separately – Oliver taking off for town on his bike, Elio watching from the balcony or a window, as he did on the day of Oliver’s arrival. Just like Elio – to whose point of view we are primarily anchored – we yearn to see the space between them dissolve.
In this way, Call Me by Your Name’s early sequences function like an extended tease. Obviously, touching is only possible if Elio and Oliver dare to bridge the space between them, and they dare each other to act on their desire in a myriad of ways. After Oliver disrupts Elio masturbating and suggests they take a swim together alone, we see them in the small garden pool. Elio reads, turned towards the camera, as Oliver swims back and forth towards Elio’s body. It’s clear he’s mostly interested in what Elio is doing; just as Elio, not really reading, is hyperaware of Oliver’s presence close by. When Oliver asks Elio, “What are you thinking about?” Elio responds with, “It’s private.” A quietly triumphant smile is visible on his face. Although we see Oliver looking at Elio, now trying to figure him out, Elio’s body isn’t giving anything away yet either. As he will later do during their piano flirtation, Elio draws Oliver closer to him and takes pleasure in doing so – here, literally testing the waters between them.
Elio and Oliver are taking small steps towards a common language and developing the script as they go. Elio, due to his age and inexperience, has more to learn than Oliver; but he’s also more fearless. His growing nerve is evident when he dares to dance into Oliver’s space one night at an outdoor disco. After watching Oliver’s body moving slowly with Chiara, and then with less restraint on his own once “Love My Way” comes on, Elio makes his first attempt to get closer to Oliver in a way that he’s comfortable with. They dance side-by-side – not quite together, but physically closer than they have been before. The sequence that unfolds around the Battle of Piave monument, allows Elio to be even bolder. While Elio’s verbal confession of desire is opaque and indirect, his body tells Oliver what he wants more clearly. Moving around the monument from opposite sides, they eventually stand and face each other. There is nowhere left to hide. “You know I’m not going anywhere,” Elio says. Oliver might tell Elio it’s best he pretend he never said anything, but when he falters and pauses as Elio rides away, it’s clear that the younger man’s courage has left him nervous and exposed.
The unveiling of each man’s feelings towards the other at the Piave monument creates the conditions that make touch possible in the sequences that follow at the river and on the grass. Despite mutual uncertainty, they each reach out. When we meet Elio he is only beginning to explore his sexuality. Touching Oliver helps him to resolve the argument he’s having with his own body – does he like boys, girls, or both. Oliver is wary, but also more physically confident. We assume he’s done this before. But Elio still has a lot to learn; evident in the way he dives in, mouth wide open, when Oliver kisses him, as they lie side-by-side in the grass. He might not be sure what he’s doing, but Elio is hungry to taste and clearly delighting in the pleasure that touching and being touched by Oliver brings.
What matters here is how kissing Oliver changes Elio, allowing him to relax and explore the physical language that is so natural to him in a new way. He becomes more daring. He refuses to “be good” and stop kissing; he climbs on top of Oliver, and then places a hand on his crotch. Later that day, when Oliver massages Elio’s foot after a nosebleed, Elio lets his fingers wander to Oliver’s chest, his face, and neck. The sequence, which traps Elio and Oliver tight in the corner of the frame, is arguably the film’s most intimate. Elio and Oliver are learning the language of touch from each other. It is mutual, comprised of give and take, listening and responding. Oliver’s compassionate and erotic gesture, coupled with the warmth of his facial expression, tells Elio he desires him too, even if he can’t find the words to say so. The physical language that Elio and Oliver have been developing in increments is now blossoming, and Elio’s fingers, caressing Oliver’s skin, speak back.
Touching and being touched by Oliver makes Elio more open and at ease with his body, but it’s at this point that Guadagnino temporarily removes the possibility of more touching between them. It’s an absence sorely felt – by Elio, and by the audience. Guadagnino reminds us once again that what Elio and Oliver have can’t last. After the intimacy of their kissing and Oliver’s worshipful foot massage, Guadagnino keeps Elio and Oliver almost completely apart on screen until the day they first sleep together. He then drags out that day until midnight comes, by having Oliver disappear entirely from the world of the film after lunch. The tension is excruciating. As a result of this absence, when they finally touch again – Oliver’s hand on top of Elio’s hand out on the balcony – it registers with an enormous emotional and sexual buzz.
Once Elio and Oliver enter ‘their’ bedroom, the physical language they have been developing together finds full voice. Touch closes the space that had previously existed between them, symbolised by the slamming door that secures their privacy. They are now free to explore and try new ways of communicating. A playful bite on the shoulder reminds us of Elio’s nervousness as he tries to figure out how to touch a man. But as he climbs all over and wraps himself around Oliver’s body we also see how euphoric the experience is for him, and just how close he wants to get. As they sit on the bed together, Elio’s toes find Oliver’s toes. “Does this make you happy?” Oliver asks. Elio says yes, as the camera isolates their feet and Oliver puts his other foot on top of Elio’s. Expressing his desire with small, sensual gestures, Elio is speaking Oliver’s language now.
Touch takes Elio and Oliver to a place where the boundary between their bodies ceases to exist. Oliver’s request that Elio, “Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine,” is a deep, intimate exchange of body and mind. More than “I love you,” this trading of names says, “I am you, and you are me.” It is a statement that renders all the words that remain unsaid between them in the short time they have together utterly pointless. Their physical language fills in the gaps. Elio’s and Oliver’s body mould sinuously together – throughout the night their legs are so intricately intertwined it’s impossible to know whose limbs belong to whom. Each has surrendered to the other; each has told the other, my body is your body. There is no turning back. Nothing is off limits.
And yet these moments of blissful intimacy gain power and pathos because of the moments without touch that Guadagnino invariably juxtaposes them against. This dynamic is in play again the morning after they sleep together when Elio pulls away from Oliver in confusion and self-doubt. He comes down to breakfast with a kiss for his parents as Oliver sits quietly, contemplating the state of affairs. It is unlikely that Elio would kiss Oliver in front of his parents. But after the closeness of the night before, we feel the absence of a kiss between the new lovers – accentuated by Elio’s slow movement toward his chair – at the moment when we are expecting it most. Later, after spending another night together, Elio wakes up and reaches out for Oliver, but touches only the emptiness of his bed. Guadagnino is reminding us once again that soon there will be no touching; that soon Oliver will exit Elio’s world, perhaps, forever.
The final days that Elio and Oliver spend together in Bergamo are endowed with an extraordinary intimacy that Guadagnino repeatedly unravels by stressing their impermanence. Signalled via a point of view shot that takes in Elio’s and Oliver’s shared perspective of the road ahead as “Mystery of Love” begins, they are now so close they are one body. And yet we can’t see them, only hear them; their voices flowing into a new scene, their bodies now visible as they hike towards a waterfall. Elio leads the way, but then turns back to Oliver. Looking at his lover with a sense of wonder, he reaches out to caress his face, as if to check that he’s real.
On their last night together, drunk and ecstatically wandering the streets, Elio’s desire to never stop touching Oliver is palpable. We can see how he worships Oliver, but we also see that he’s already losing him. Elio wraps himself around Oliver’s body, but Oliver is drawn out of his arms when he hears “Love My Way” in the distance. He runs towards the music. While Elio follows him, Chalamet’s face crumples from adoration into alarm – Elio feels Oliver disappearing from his grasp. This response becomes graver when Oliver pulls away again to dance with an Italian woman. Elio left alone and at a distance, vomits, his body in revolt at its impending separation from Oliver’s. Despite wanting to completely possess Oliver – as his intense experience with a peach back at the villa made clear – Elio is realising too late that he can’t hold onto him forever.
Making their way back to the hotel, Elio’s and Oliver’s final kiss (we are not privy to what transpires back in their hotel room) visualises the complete ductility of their bodies that the exchange of names has promised. As they hold each other with increasing ferocity, the shot slides in and out of focus. The space between them dissolves, the outline of each man’s body melting into the other. Back in their room, with Oliver positioned at the window waiting for the sun to rise and his train to come, we enter Elio’s drunken fever dream – the film’s negative inverted so that the short sequence burns orange with the fire of passion. But this could also be Oliver thinking, contemplating the elation of his time with Elio; or a happy fantasy, simultaneously imagined by both men, that Guadagnino allows them to share. What is clear is that at this moment, Elio and Oliver are so close they also inhabit the same mind.
Ultimately, Guadagnino’s gentle attempts to prepare us for Oliver’s absence don’t matter at all. We are no more ready for his disappearance from the world of the film than Elio is prepared for his disappearance from his life. Touch means so much in Call Me by Your Name because of what it represents when it’s gone. To touch another person is to risk everything. Touching has made Elio and Oliver more vulnerable. They understand from the start that every step closer to each other is also a step closer to the end of their relationship, but they boldly reach out anyway. The intimacy of their time in Bergamo makes the pain of their separation greater, and this memory – for Elio and us – haunts the film’s winter coda, when Oliver is just a voice on the other end of the phone. But in Bergamo, at the train station, neither man is quite ready to let go of the other’s body. Losing the other means losing a part of themselves. “We wasted so many days,” Elio reflected, back at the villa. And in their final, silent embrace, as they cleave to each other with increasingly hopeless desperation, we can feel the weight of all those lost days, wasted without touching.
IN A LONELY PLACE 
beautiful essay! CMBYN is finally showing where I live – need to see this film immediately. 🙂
Thank you! I encourage you to run to the cinema as soon as you can.
Bravo for such a well written essay. I realize that I missed some of the subtleties of Call Me By Your Name and some of these small moments. Now when I see it again I think that I’ll have a much richer experience and understanding. Also, I found that in the spaces where there is no touching there are looks and these looks are filled with as much sensuality as their touches.
Thank you, and absolutely true about the spaces with no touching – it’s definitely a film that articulates just how much can be felt between two people when they are not touching too.
Thank you for this brilliant analysis! The tactile element really came across when I saw the film, and your detailed reading of these scenes clarifies it beautifully.
Thank you so much for reading and for your feedback.
Thank you for reading.
As I read this article the more I admire how Luca artistically gave flesh to the beauty of love through the actions of Elio and Oliver….
So glad to hear this. Thank you for reading.
Thank you for these brilliant insights. Since seeing the film (now several times) I’ve been on an endless quest to devour every piece of criticism and analysis. As another commenter wrote, the looks, glances and gazes of this film are important, but you have written SO convincingly and empathetically here on the sensual power of Luca, Timothee and Armie’s work on touch. Beautiful! There is so much in this movie to enjoy and appreciate.
That’s lovely of you to say and thank you for reading. I think there are so many elements at work in this film – including looking and the use of space – but it was touch as a kind of alternative mode of communication that stuck out after the first couple of times I saw the film and which has continued to resonate since. It felt like the most important thing for me, personally, to write about.
Wow! Thank you for this beautiful essay. Makes me want to watch CMBYN all over again to see to the different subtleties I missed! Good point about the distance between Elio and Oliver, in how that shows their desires as much as the times they do touch. So many feelings!
My pleasure! Thanks for reading. I’m glad it made you think and feel!
Great work! Can you please share your thoughts about the ending. Ellio calls out his own name 3 times but oliver just once. Any thoughts?
I’ve written about the very final scene in some detail here – https://seventh-row.com/2017/12/15/best-scenes-2-call-me-by-your-name/ (it’s the 5th entry on this list) – but as for what you are specifically asking about Elio repeating his own name multiple times where Oliver only groans it once in response, I think it’s just an indication of Elio’s increasingly desperate need to be close to Oliver, to stop him talking about other things and to reconnect with that intimacy they shared.
I think when Elio & Oliver sleep together for the first time and Oliver says “call me by your name & I’ll call you by mine” Elio repeats his own name three times & Oliver says/groans his name once. So I think the telephone call in the last scene is a harkening back to that.
Yes, he does. He’s trying it out. Seeing what it sounds like/feels like. Makes sense that he’d want to recapture that feeling.
How many times you have watched the movie? Lol.
There was a scene when it was raining and his mom starts reading the German 16th century story about the Knight… What did you make of that scene? To me it felt like his parents gave him the push that he needed.
Seven times. I will probably see it a couple more times before it disappears from cinema screens. Yes, I think that scene is definitely the impetus for Elio telling Oliver how he feels – it’s the story that encourages him to take the risk. And I am pretty sure that his parents, especially his mother, understands what Elio is feeling. She certainly knows that Oliver likes her son a lot. She tells Elio that, which I think also helps him to act. Thanks for reading.
I’ve written about the film elsewhere if you are interested in reading these other pieces. The links are below:
https://seventh-row.com/2017/12/11/timothee-chalamet-call-me-by-your-name/
https://seventh-row.com/2017/12/12/best-scenes-1-call-me-by-your-name-2/
https://seventh-row.com/2017/12/15/best-scenes-2-call-me-by-your-name/
Hello! I came across your essay somewhat randomly, and I just wanted to say THANK YOU for writing this beautiful piece. CMBYN affected me deeply, the first film that has led me to view it multiple times in the cinema as well as to learn everything I can about its making.
Your piece does a wonderful job of examining the film through a particular lens. The observations you make (and write about so well) are the kind that are new, yet immediately seem so obvious– because they’re so very right!
I could go on, but I’ll keep this brief just to say thank you for sharing your insights, perspective, and gifts of observation and skillful writing. Your piece has added to my appreciation of the film, and will no doubt have me applying a similar filter (about on-screen presence, characters’ distance from one another, the use of contact, and so much more) to other films I see.
Thank you! Keep writing! I’m going to see if I can subscribe to your blog now.
Hi. Thank you. What a lovely message to receive. CMBYN is definitely a deeply affecting film and I needed to write about it as much as I wanted to. It’s difficult to explain why, so I am glad this essay has resonated with you and opened up new ways for you to make sense of the film’s ideas and how they were expressed by the camera and the performances. Thank you again x
I simply cannot believe that it was shot entirely on ONE 35mm lens!!!!
Saw it again tonight and , after reading your essay, paid more attention to the space/touch present. I especially noticed how, after their first night together, the went swimming and not only were they far from one another, but he way the shot unfolds, it’s almost as if the viewer is asked to question: “But where is…?” And then the camera pans waaaaay left, and Oliver is finally revealed (swimming even further away). That whole collection of scenes/moments upon their waking in the moment, right up to when Oliver shuts the door on de-trunked Elio, really does a fantastic job of spelling out the agonizing uncertainty of the moments following such vulnerable intimacy.
Another question for you, if you are interested–
Any thoughts on the coin toss at the end? I’m midway through the book and wonder if that may cast more light on that choice. But I wonder about that.
Thanks again for your contributions!
I love the way the space between them opens up (then contracts again) after they sleep together and that scene swimming in the river is a perfect articulation of this. Guadagnino’s use of that wide shot makes you feel the enormity of the gap and want to see them move closer together soon. I wanted to add some discussion of this too but the piece was getting very long (I could seriously have analysed every scene) and focused on the breakfast scene instead when Elio kisses his parents and we feel the absence of his kissing Oliver.
The coin toss … well that’s a Hanukkah gelt, chocolate money, and I am not sure what the significance of giving it is during this holiday and if that has any resonance with Elio’s current state of mind. The book doesn’t include this scene and no specific mention of Elio tossing a coin. Drawing attention to the holiday might just be another way to underline Elio and Oliver’s shared Judaism.
Thanks for writing this emotional and sensitive review. I’m deeply moved by Elio and Oliver’s beautiful story and I can’t stop thinking of them. Your delicate words are like a balm for my broken heart. Thank you
Thank you for reading and for your very kind comment. I’m so pleased they resonated with your experience of this beautiful film.
Yes, I can only agree – it’s the same for me. I have seen the movie only once in the Cinema (I have young kids and it’s difficult to get to see a movie), but several times on DVD now, and of course I’ve read the book and listened to the soundtrack a lot. It is so affecting I totally can’t let go of this story and these characters, and I have thought about These Scenes and all the details so much. It means so much to me to read such insightful, intelligent and precise essays, and you have put into words so well many of the things that I also observed, but you also mention subtleties that I hadn’t noticed quite so clearly. It just really helps to know others think about this movie and love it just as much as I do – it’s sort of therapeutic, haha. And your essay (also your other ones) just increase the admiration I have for Luca Guadagnino – what a genius and wonderful soul he is. And what wonderful actors, sigh. So, a big thank you from me, too.
Thank you Maria, for reading and for saying this.
Hi! Found myself here reading those comments after such a beautiful article and thought your experience with the film feels so much like mine. This film literally got me stuck. I normally watch many films a week and when I stumbled across this I had to stop for a while, and rewatch, and rewatch… I caught myself thinking about the characters a lot, and somehow I cannot let go. I also read the book (twice) and listened to the soundtrack a lot. It’s a beautiful spell. This is why I’ve also written about it, found it helped me channel my love in a way other than harassing my friends 🙂
Thank you and that feeling of being ‘stuck’ is one I understand very well. Every time I rewatch it I feel a bit frozen in the emotions it unleashes in me. It actually takes several hours to break free.
Just a small correction: The Piave monument is actually in Pandino (see here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Piazza_Vittorio_Emanuele_II_(Pandino)), though the film does make it seem like all the city scenes are in Crema.
Thank you for such a well-written essay. I especially liked your comments on the negative inversion/fever dream and the in and out of focus shots on the streets of Bergamo; I had been puzzled by their intention and meaning. I’m also curious about the hazy shots of Elio when he is waiting for Oliver outside; at one point it even looks like the border of a filmstrip flashes on the screen.
Thanks for the correction. I think I was just lumping all those ‘into town’ shots with Crema. Thanks also for reading my essay and your kind words. I’m glad you find my interpretation of the fever dream and the use of out of focus shots interesting. You are correct about the filmstrip that is visible during those scenes as Elio sits and pines waiting for Oliver’s return. Guadagnino has explained in interviews that this was an error in the film processing when it came back from the lab, but that he liked the effect so much he kept it. I am not really sure that it means anything specific but it certainly looks great and adds another level of visual interest.
Do you have a link to “Guadagnino has explained in interviews that this was an error in the film processing when it came back from the lab”; I’d like to have it for reference; you’ve been reading more than I have! There’s a lot of repetition out there though. Went to a booksigning for Aciman last night; so exciting. He didn’t say anything particularly worth recapping or new really though.
I can’t recall where I’ve read it as I’ve read it in a few different places, but he also told me directly when I interviewed him.
Hi Halophite – You can use the special feature of the DVD as a reference. If you watch the commented version by Chalamet and Stuhlbarg they mention this story directly as it occurs on screen.
Hope it helps 🙂
What a touching essay! It is so well-written that it took me back to the universe depicted on the screen as well as in the book. Very astute observations and commentary on their love. This essay alone deserves an award – thank you!
Thank you for reading and for your kind words.
Beautifully written. I felt every word. Though I did read a very interesting perspective about their first kiss in the grass. Elio leaps in mouth open so that he has more power in the situation. Oliver might have initiated the intent to kiss but Elio doesn’t allow Oliver to kiss him before he does. He wants to show he’s Oliver’s equal. This movie has made me crave emotions. Their emotions. All of it. Gobble gobble 🙂
Thank you. I totally understand what you mean about it being a film that makes you crave emotion – it makes me desire desire.
I like this reading too. I like how the power repeatedly shifts between them. The film is so true to life in that respect.
I really appreciated this piece. So insightful and original compared to many more general ones I’ve read around the web (guardian, observer, new york times included…). I was also somewhat disappointed that Mark Kermode (you know him?), didn’t appreciate it as much as I would have liked.
I’m sure the game of touches and distances was all intentional by the director, and this confirms the idea Luca is a sensitive soul that will give us much more to enjoy in years to come.
On a side note, I’ve read of real ongoing conversations about the possibility of a sequel/trilogy. However dangerous this might be – wouldn’t want this little masterpiece to be spoiled by a big-budget melodrama kind of sequel – I still would love to see those characters again on the big screen. What is your opinion about this possibility?
I do know Mark Kermode’s reviews. I am lucky (unlucky?) that I can write these longer form pieces on my own site (although I don’t get paid for them and they do take a lot of my time and energy) where I can experiment and not have to conform to the restrictions of writing standard style reviews.
My initial feelings about a follow up film or films – in the style of Richard Linklater’s The Before Trilogy – was a lack of enthusiasm, that this film was perfect and didn’t need anything else. But as time has passed I’ve changed my mind completely. I would really like to check in with Elio and Oliver in the future; I care about them, and I’d really like to see them again. I doubt it would be a melodrama. I imagine a follow up film checking in on them separately and then maybe bringing them together towards the end, building that anticipation in the audience like Guadagnino does so well.
Thanks! I do see what you mean in terms of time and energy…I’ve been putting together something about cmbyn for the last couple of weeks and will publish them online soon. There’s really no reward other than talking about the things one loves, and this film has rekindled my passion for writing. Apparently this film has been a miracle to so many lives and I am one of those witnesses. Will follow your blog. Cheers!
This is an amazing essay, I want to watch the movie again so I can see all this little things that I lose the first time. You write amazingly, I’m really happy I found this.
Thank you so much for reading and letting me know you enjoyed it.