Call Me Again

Call Me By Your Name
received Academy Award
nominations for Best Picture and Best Actor today


A decade ago, I published a review of Andre Aciman's novel of passion and first love, Call Me By Your Name. Now, there is a film by the same name. Set on the coast of Italy, the film is as sensual as the novel. It is a dazzling vision to behold. The actor who portrays the 17-year-old narrator, named Elio,  is the remarkable Timothée Chalamet, a perfect embodiment of a young man of intelligence and sensuality arriving at manhood. He falls in love with his archaeologist father's assistant, a graduate student named Oliver, age 24, who is as intelligent and sensual as himself.

The road to bliss is challenging. The two have chemistry from their first meeting on. Yet the awkward first passes are mis-understood or fail to lead anywhere. Both men are beloved of and sought after by young women. Both men feel obliged to return those flirtations. Elio, like many gay men coming of age, experiments with straight sex. There is never any doubt, however, that it is Oliver he longs for. Elio reverses the more usual progression of straight men willing to experiment early on with another guy. But where straight men then go on, more sure than ever, in their attraction for women; in Elio the more powerful and lasting love is for men. Chalamet shows brilliant insight, as an actor, into this deeper need for a same-sex relationship in a young gay man; revealing with subtlety and nuance, the difference between casual sex and friendship with a young woman, and the primal love for a man.

Unfortunately, some of this subtlety is lost in the film itself. The title of the story, Call Me By Your Name, is a vivid and powerful sentence in the novel. It is key to understanding the merging of the identities of the two lovers. They see the other in themselves. In the most profound relationships we take on our lover's identity to a degree. We learn who we are through learning of the other. The thought is further embodied in the scene with the peach. By eating the peach, Oliver consumes Elio's identity, his essential self. The film simply leaves the title as an intimate line unexplained, just as it leaves the peach uneaten. In this respect, the director misses an important key to the depth of the relationship, and fails to see what the title and peach scene tell us about the characters. 

Another difference between book and film is in the character of Elio's father. Here the film makes a great contribution, providing us with a wise and gentle parent who not only understands his son's love for Oliver, but also understands the value of love, even when it is not everlasting, even though it does not endure. Once again, superb acting and direction make the film rise to a higher level of art. As was the case with Aciman's novel, we are given an exquisite, much needed look into the human heart and psyche.