Call Me By Your Name

Beyond the obvious accolades and nominations since the release of director Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name, a friend has been talking my ears off about this film since for the longest, turning every conversation back to this. So at the very least, I knew the film would be good. So after finally seeing it, yeah I get it and would have to agree. It's a great coming of age love story starring Armie Hammer and Timothee Chalamet. Dustin Hoffman's The Graduate and Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together are what immediately came to my mind. Sure, the homosexual story aspect is an obvious identifier, but it's not even a point of contention, discomfort, or distraction. Set in the picturesque setting of northern Italy in the early 1980's, the authentic exterior and interior locations along with the artwork and beauty of the region were really nice to see. That was probably the first element that got me, captured by the beautiful 35 mm single lens work of Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom that gives it a kind of still photo quality that helps to unfold the story and characters. The acting was very naturalistic with minimum dialogue from the main characters, but an abundance of subtleties and gestures. Witness Chalamet's humorous peach scene or the wrenching end credit scene and you have some examples of great acting. When you add a great soundtrack to sprinkle over all this, you can't go wrong. It's also worth mentioning that the monologue of actor Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays the dad of young Chalamet's character, was just one of the best and most aspirationally moving and noteworthy of lines I've ever heard before in a film and indeed something every viewer should take something away from and ascend to. Call Me By Your Name transcends a gender label in favor of universal themed stories of love awakening and love loss with Stuhlbarg's monologue putting a gem of an empathetic punctuation on that point. It's that transcending universal theme that makes this film shine beyond any gender label.