Call Me by Your Name

When I reviewed André Aciman's first novel, Call Me by Your Name, on this blog, in July 2009, it never occurred to me that anyone would make a film based on the novel. 

The novel is the story of the six-week summer romance between a highly intelligent and precocious teenaged Italian boy (Elio) and a visiting graduate school student from America (Oliver), set in and about a small beach town in northern Italy.  The story is told by Elio, looking back as an adult, and told from his highly subjective viewpoint.  Aciman is an authority on the writings of Proust, and his own writings -- fiction, memoir, and essay -- all deal with Proust's concerns with detail of observation, memory, and the consequences of choices made and not made.

But the story was compelling, if slow-moving, and the Italian setting was well-described, sumptuous, and captivating.  The temptation to film the novel was apparently irresistible.

Luca Guadagnino's film -- released gradually nationwide and internationally over the past two months -- avoids many of the pitfalls I would have foreseen.  He eliminates -- except perhaps by inference -- Aciman's philosophical and literary concerns.  Rather than have the story told by Elio in retrospect, he presents it in the present tense.  The point of view remains primarily, but not rigidly, that of Elio -- but the film is an objective presentation of a story, not Elio's subjective interpretation.

The story as told by the film ends with Oliver's return to classes in America, departing by train while Elio chokes back tears, and -- most dramatically -- by Oliver's telephone call to Elio at Christmas with the "happy news" that he was now engaged to be married to a girl he had been going with all along.  The film ends with an unbroken 3½ minute shot of Elio's staring into the flames in the fireplace, trying desperately -- and unsuccessfully -- not to cry.  As the closing credits roll.

The movie takes some other liberties with what was a fairly long novel, but the essential story remains the same.  The movie is effective in converting Elio's interior thoughts, emotions, and reactions, as related in the novel, into something that could be filmed without the use of distracting voice-overs, but it is effective only because of the exceptional acting by Timothée Chalamet. Chalamet's face portrays Elio's interior thoughts and feelings with great sensitivity, even while his lips utter only reticent, polite, common-place remarks.

Chalamet is a leading contender for the Oscar for Best Actor.  He deserves it.