English summary

“Fantastic film: sparkling, intimate and honest!”

This sparkling film about a first true love is based on the novel of the same name by André Aciman.  Once more, Italian director Luca Guadagnino proves himself an extraordinarily sensual filmmaker. Unanimously praised, with 73 film awards and the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay!

Seventeen-year-old Elio spends the summer of 1983 with his parents in the Italian countryside. When  Oliver, a handsome American research assistant, arrives in Italy to work with Elio’s intellectual father, Elio is intrigued. He comes up with all kinds of reasons to spend time with Oliver, and challenges him. Erotic tension develops between the two, and much of that tension arises out of what is left unsaid. f Elio’s emotional life is full of small nuances and contradictions.

Director Guadagnino succeeds in having us watch in fascination as the two keep circling each other – quite literally, even, when they cycle together. Bits of daily life are interspersed with fragments brimming with rich erotic fantasies.

Although Call Me by Your Name could have become just another coming-of-age story about innocence lost, there is no moralising here. What the lovers discover is sensuality and sensitivity, the comforting power of conversation, and an intimacy that transcends every physical connection. Yet even their summer comes to its inevitable end. Relationships turn out to be as ephemeral as our existence, but love remains indestructible.