Call Me By Your Name

[SuperJunior]

It's leading Independent Spirit Awards noms w/six including best feature, best director, best male lead (Chalamet) and best supporting male (Hammer).

[OCClient]

It's leading Independent Spirit Awards noms w/six including best feature, best director, best male lead (Chalamet) and best supporting male (Hammer).

Chalamet's other movie Lady Bird also was recognized with nominations in a few categories. I'm looking forward to see him in both. I actually saw CMBYN and will again.

[LoveNDino]

I usually agree with Mr. Edelstein, so...

 

Call Me by Your Name Is a Masterpiece

By David Edelstein

The 24-year-old visitor, Oliver (Armie Hammer), has an easy, almost arrogant physicality. He’s broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, absurdly handsome. But he’s hard to read. Oliver gives the shirtless Elio a quick shoulder massage and then heads off to play volleyball. Was it innocent or a come-on? Whichever, Oliver’s touch lingers. Elio sneaks into Oliver’s room and sticks his nose into a pair of discarded bathing trunks, inhaling sharply. He puts them on his head. He’s in heaven

Call Me by Your Name takes place in summer, 1983. It has the feel of something recollected in tranquility, but the eroticism is startlingly immediate. The faithful adaptation of André Aciman’s novel is by James Ivory, but the movie has a different feel than Ivory’s own formal, somewhat stiff work. The Italian director Luca Guadagnino creates a mood of free-floating sexual longing. Oliver never wears long pants, only short shorts or swim trunks, and young men are always doffing their shirts and jumping into sparkling water or riding on bicycles along dirt roads. The flesh tones stand out against the villa’s pale whites and yellow walls — more tactile but on a continuum with the sculptures and oil paintings by men with similar longings centuries ago. Call Me by Your Name is hardly the first film set in Italy to juxtapose youth and beauty and fleeting seasons with ancient buildings and ruins. But I can’t recall such a continuum between the ephemeral and the enduring.

 

I also can’t remember a filmmaker who has captured the essence of midsummer this way, lazy but so vivid that every sound registers. Sound floats in through windows — of insects and birds but mostly wind. The presence of Nature can be felt in every one of cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s frames. It’s reflected in the bodies of the characters. Oliver is hard for Elio — and us — to read. Is he toying with the teenager? Or is something stirring in him, too? In this atmosphere, how can something notbe stirring? There’s friction in the uncertainty, heightened when Oliver dances provocatively with Elio’s kinda-sorta girlfriend. The minutes go by and then we’re into the film’s second hour with everything maddeningly —but thrillingly — undefined.

 

The love scenes between Elio and Oliver aren’t explicit — they only feel as if they are. The title is said in a moment of passion. It’s Oliver’s fervent desire to dissolve his self, to become one with Elio. I should point out that Armie Hammer doesn’t look 24 — more like 29, which he was during filming, and that changes the dynamic. Make of that what you will (17 was above the age of legal consent in Italy), but it’s Elio who finally pushes Oliver over the brink — who calls the question.

 

Michael Stuhlbarg plays Elio’s father, an anthropology professor who gazes intently at his son, seems to know what’s happening — and doesn’t interfere. He and Elio have a revelatory conversation near the end, but it’s the very last shot that stays in mind, all but dissolving the boundary between viewer and actor. Everything in Call Me by Your Name registers momentously, from the scene that definitively raises the question, “Do I dare to eat a peach?” to the ’80s dance numbers to the yearning Sufjan Stevens song over the stunning credits. Chalamet gives the performance of the year. By any name, this is a masterpiece.

[LoveNDino]

Scorching...

[LoveNDino]

Love it....

[GLEE]

Not open here in Texas until later as well....

[LoveNDino]

David Edelstein is right. It is a masterpiece.

 

Stuhlbarg and Chalamet, as you may have heard, are both excellent. The former's speech, which should be required watching for all fathers -to-be, and the latter's end-credit scene, are wonders to behold. But as excellent as those two are, my favorite performances are those of the mother, Amira Casar, and Hammer. These two show depths of emotion and subtlety that breaks your heart as it lifts your spirits.

 

Guadadigno is at the top of his game. Aided by his cinematographer, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, he created a wondrous world that lingers even after you've left the cinema.

 

I LOVED IT!

[OCClient]

Just returned from watching a screening in NYC. Although I think it is an excellent movie I am not sure that it is the "Be All and End All." Maybe all of the previews, press junkets and youtube overkill took away a lot of the surprise and nuances. Great performances....check! Great cinematography.....check! Great script.....check! Great direction......check! I did not, however love the music. I found it a bit strident and too loud. I think the film will become a classic of sorts and play very well on the Academy Awards and the other award circuits. But.............

I enjoyed CMBYN more the 2nd time. I thought about my initial reaction last summer, that it didn't bowl me over. Perhaps I'd been too influenced by the book, so I altered my expectations ahead of my second viewing, which seemed to help. I also watched James Ivory's Maurice last night which helped align my anticipation for seeing CMBYN this morning.

 

This time I really saw Oliver's love and joy and how he was consumed with Elio during their passionate moments. Elio seemed to be all aboard, climbing, almost scrambling into Oliver's arms.

 

For me the music was good. Ravel was sampled twice. Lovely. I'm a Sufjan Stevens fan. I especially like how his Visions of Gideon was sampled in the middle as a foreshadowing, and then the entire piece came at us with that ending. The other two songs by Stevens worked really well for me. His Futile Devices got me a little choked up this time. Mystery of Love ought to get the Oscar for best song. Would love seeing Stevens accept, and I imagine the clever, funny things he might say. He is quite a unique fellow.

 

I'll certainly see CMBYN a third time.

 

Lastly, please don't rush out during the ending credits. You'll break Luca's heart and miss some of the best of it.

 

[LoveNDino]

Yay!

Sony Pictures Classics' Call Me by Your Name is making headlines at the specialty box office after launching Friday in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles on Friday. Directed by Luca Guadagnino, the critically acclaimed film is projected to post the biggest per screen average — $95,000-$100,000 — since La La Land in December 2016. The film stars Armie Hammer as a young academic who embarks on a love affair with his professor's 17-year-old son (Timothee Chalamet).

[OCClient]

Below is a link to a review of the movie offered by a female critic from LA. I am drawn to what women have to say about the movie. The reason for that is I find that too many (straight or closeted) male critics tend to project their own bullshit and even their own subtle layer of filth over something beautiful. The one thing she left out when comparing to Moonlight and Brokeback Mountain is that in Call Me By Your Name

 

 

****************************************SPOILER ALERT************************************************************

 

no one is beaten to death, sent to prison, ridiculed, etc. for being drawn towards another dude

 

********************************************************************************************************************

 

Call Me By Your Name review LA Weekly critic on our local NPR

[+ beethoven]

I enjoyed the movie a lot, but I did not enjoy seeing it at the Paris theater in New York. This theater, one of the last single-screen theaters left in New York, was recently renovated, but someone forgot to place the seats properly. Every seat is directly behind the one in front of it. If you need to read subtitles, you can't -- if a 6'4" man is seated in front of you, as was my misfortune yesterday.

But I digress -- the movie is wonderful!!

[LoveNDino]

[OCClient]

Here is Chalamet being interviewed in French. This can't help but seem impressive to Hollywood, and I imagine the French will eat it up,

 

Cette belle jeune star américaine parle français.

 

The French interviewer seemed delighted.

 

[Moondance]

The Sumptuous Love Story of Call Me by Your Name

Luca Guadagnino’s tale of budding gay romance in 1980s Italy is one of the most mesmerizing films of the year.

By David Sims, The Atlantic, 11-29-17

 

“What do you do around here?” the tall, strapping Oliver (Armie Hammer) asks Elio (Timothée Chalamet), the 17-year-old giving him a tour of the charming Italian village where Oliver will be living for the next six weeks. “Wait for the summer to end,” the bored-seeming Elio says with a sigh. “And what do you do in the winter? Wait for the summer to come?” Oliver shoots back. That only gets a chuckle from Elio, but that line nails the initial mood of Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous new romance, which follows a deep connection that springs out of those restless days of late adolescence.

 

Elio is the intelligent, charming son of archeology professor Samuel Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg), with whom Oliver, a graduate student, is interning for the summer. Guadagnino’s film, based on the 2007 novel by André Aciman, charts Elio and Oliver’s relationship, which develops haltingly at first but then burns brightly. It’s a swooning tale about the seismic power of first love—one that doesn’t dismiss Elio’s experience as a folly of youth, but instead digs into the unmistakable trace it leaves, for better or worse.

 

It’s also a story of queer love that isn’t tinged with horror or tragedy, a gay romance about a genuine attachment. At the same time, Call Me by Your Name doesn’t attempt to sanitize itself as a bland, “universal” film in hopes of appealing to a wider audience. It’s both intensely erotic and intensely contained, acknowledging the very private lives gay men were forced to lead in the early 1980s, when the film is set. As a result, in Call Me by Your Name, virtually every bit of physical contact is crucial and electrifying.

 

The intimacy Guadagnino (and James Ivory, who wrote the film’s script) finds in these characters is present from the beginning, but Chalamet (a 21-year-old budding superstar who I knew best from an old season of Homeland) is the audience’s way in, as a boy on the verge of adulthood who develops immediate, if confused, attraction to the confident Oliver. Not long after the two first meet, Elio retires to his room and reclines in his bed, looking at the tuft of hair sprouting from his armpit, and lazily blowing on it. A few scenes later, Elio is bold enough to sneak into Oliver’s empty room and put Oliver’s swimsuit over his head.

 

Guadagnino doesn’t include these moments to advance the plot or to let the audience in on some secret; the connection between Elio and Oliver is apparent very quickly. Rather, he’s trying to sketch a portrait of personal, formative experiences of sexuality, and of Elio’s relationship with his own body. It’s tremendously insightful work from a director who has long appreciated actors’ bodies as more than aesthetic objects. In his 2009 film I Am Love, Guadagnino presented Tilda Swinton—as a married woman having a dangerous affair—at her most ravishing, and then spends the movie digging into her vulnerable psyche. In A Bigger Splash, a music producer played by Ralph Fiennes was all physicality, dancing wildly for the camera in an extended introduction, but Guadagnino goes on to expose just how strung out his character really was.

 

Even compared to the director’s previous films (which are excellent and worth watching), Call Me by Your Name is a huge step forward for Guadagnino. The story manages to transcend all its genre trappings: This isn’t just a luxurious vacation movie, but it’s still crammed to the gills with gorgeous shots of the Italian countryside and Elio’s family home. This isn’t just an erotic drama, and yet the love scenes are all choreographed with care. And most importantly, this isn’t just a coming-of-age tale, but the ardor Elio and Oliver have for each other feels utterly vital, as if every touch will be seared into their memories.

 

Chalamet is handed the difficult task of making Elio authentically aloof and cold at times. Though he’s a teenager desperate for the approval of everyone around him, he possesses a vulnerability that he displays only occasionally. Hammer, who could so easily be reduced to the part of a typically handsome Hollywood stand-in, is mesmerizing; he switches between Oliver’s public brashness and private tenderness with ease, making his character far more than a simple object of desire. And lurking in the background is Stuhlbarg, wonderful as a knowing father who is content to mostly let his son figure things out by himself, but who steps in with a guiding hand when things get a little tougher. (He also delivers one of the most astonishing film monologues of recent memory.)

 

Call Me by Your Name soaks in that end-of-summer mood throughout, one where each move in Elio and Oliver’s courtship is loaded with tension (simply because their time together is so short, and thus so meaningful). As such, it’s thrilling to watch, even as the pair waste the days away swimming, biking, and talking around their feelings; when their dynamic finally explodes into passion, it’s one of the year’s most satisfying film moments. Each element is carefully calibrated, but deployed with consummate grace—this is a film to rush to, and to then savor every minute of.

[spiro3]

The film just got negative, bitchy reviews from not only the New Yorker and Richard Brody, but even more unexpectedly from OUT magazine.

 

Many outstanding flicks get bad reviews from some, but I have such high hopes for it. Rarely does a movie come along that seems to follow so closely a personal experience that occurred in my own life.

 

Keep those personal reviews and reactions coming! Unfortunately, I won't be able to see it here before Dec 22.

[N13]

Just returned from watching a screening in NYC. Although I think it is an excellent movie I am not sure that it is the "Be All and End All." Maybe all of the previews, press junkets and youtube overkill took away a lot of the surprise and nuances. Great performances....check! Great cinematography.....check! Great script.....check! Great direction......check! I did not, however love the music. I found it a bit strident and too loud. I think the film will become a classic of sorts and play very well on the Academy Awards and the other award circuits. But.............

 

Just saw the film again and I have to correct my comment about the music. It must have been the theater where I saw it that did that to me. It was sublime and perfect this time. Movie only got better on the second viewing. It will probably get "Brokeback Mountain-ed" for the academy awards. Pity!!!

Edited November 30, 2017 by N13

[LoveNDino]

The film just got negative, bitchy reviews from not only the New Yorker and Richard Brody, but even more unexpectedly from OUT magazine.

 

Many outstanding flicks get bad reviews from some, but I have such high hopes for it. Rarely does a movie come along that seems to follow so closely a personal experience that occurred in my own life.

 

Keep those personal reviews and reactions coming! Unfortunately, I won't be able to see it here before Dec 22.

Armond White is a famous contrarian. They don't call him the world's worst film critic for nothing. As for the New Yorker, well they called it "An Erotic Triumph." Also, they said "Luca Guadagnino’s latest film is emotionally acute and overwhelmingly sensual." Hardly what one would consider bad....

 

I have yet to check Richard Brody’s review.

 

Go see it!

Edited November 30, 2017 by LoveNDino

[LoveNDino]

Just saw the film again and I have to correct my comment about the music. It must have been the theater where I saw it that did that to me. It was sublime and perfect this time. Movie only got better on the second viewing. It will probably get "Brokeback Mountained" for the academy awards. Pity!!!

Let's hope it'd get "Moonlight-ed" instead.

[edjames]

Just saw this film at The Paris Theater here in NYC. I had no sight line problems and the theater had plenty of empty seats, just in case you were blocked from see the sub-titles, which are only in certain scenes. I had a problem at the Paris because due to construction next door there was a very audible rat-a-tat throughout the movie! Apparently signs were up at the box office but not in prominent places.

Anyway, that said, the film is very touching and the storyline is handled well. Of note is the touching scene at the end when the father sits and talks to his son about his life choices.

Did anyone see think the actor resembled Robin Williams?

Bravo!

 

ED

[foxy]

I saw it this afternoon at the Regal Union Square Theater. It was well attended for an afternoon show. I read and loved the book. So interesting to see how a screenplay has to make certain changes and parts of the book are changed or dropped entirely. But the essence of the book were all there and I confess to having some tears in my eyes along with Elio at the end. It’s a movie I will certainly see again. So much to absorb.

[LoveNDino]

I saw it this afternoon at the Regal Union Square Theater. It was well attended for an afternoon show. I read and loved the book. So interesting to see how a screenplay has to make certain changes and parts of the book are changed or dropped entirely. But the essence of the book were all there and I confess to having some tears in my eyes along with Elio at the end. It’s a movie I will certainly see again. So much to absorb.

 

Did you prefer the peach scene of the book or the movie?

[+ g56whiz]

The film just got negative, bitchy reviews from not only the New Yorker and Richard Brody, but even more unexpectedly from OUT magazine.

 

I think the Brody piece in The New Yorker is an article about the movie rather than their review. Anthony Lane their movie reviewer’s detailed and rather glowing review appears in their 12/4 Edition now out. I’d post a like if I could.

Edited December 1, 2017 by g56whiz

[LoveNDino]

I think the Brody piece in The New Yorker is an article about the movie rather than their review. Anthony Lake their movie reviewer’s detailed and rather glowing review appears in their 12/4 Edition now out. I’d post a like if I could.

Click on "An Erotic Triumph" in post #91

[+ g56whiz]

Click on "An Erotic Triumph" in post #91

 

Thanks. By the time I’d failed several times at copying the link via this old iPhone I’d forgotten the title to the piece.

[N13]

I saw it this afternoon at the Regal Union Square Theater. It was well attended for an afternoon show. I read and loved the book. So interesting to see how a screenplay has to make certain changes and parts of the book are changed or dropped entirely. But the essence of the book were all there and I confess to having some tears in my eyes along with Elio at the end. It’s a movie I will certainly see again. So much to absorb.

 

Which showing were you at? I was at the 11:50