Call Me By Your Name: Film Synopsis

By: Emily Hamill

"Me Chame pelo seu Nome", destaque de roteiro adaptado nas premiações (Foto: Divulgação)

The room was dark. The couch was waiting. The TV was glowing. And so I sat. But not in the casual, lazy, everyday way, the way one sits to watch whatever just so happens to be on, whether it be Family Feud or Forensic Files. No, I sat down with a purpose that night. I was going to watch a film I had heard of but never knew much about, and it was titled Call Me By Your Name. I had seen it in the flurry of the 2017 Oscars, I had recalled it after watching Lady Bird and seeing Timothée Chalamet play the most perfect high school asshole, the anti-government, Bukowski-reading, couldn’t-care-less type; but I never really listened to the gut instinct inside me screaming for me to watch it. Embarrassingly, what finally motivated me to watch it was the infamous Tik Tok video of the dancing scene, the one that triggered a trend of a bunch of basic Tik Tok boys trying, and failing, to imitate Chalamet’s slow-motion, free-spirited dance move portrayed in the movie. If you know what I’m talking about, Playdate by Melanie Martinez must be playing quietly within the stereo of your mind. Hate to break it to you, but Love My Way by the Psychedelic Furs will rightfully replace that tune after watching the film. Anyways, “I follow where my mind goes”, so here goes.

Picture this: It’s summer 1983, Northern Italy. Or rather, ‘somewhere in Northern Italy,’ the much better mantra of the story. Though a rather blurry sheen of mystique surrounds the phrase, the location is almost immediately revealed as the charming northern Italian small-town of Crema. Wide, up-close shots of its rolling green hills, abundant fruit trees, and cobblestone streets serve as the perfect setting for the fleeting, and yet the lasting experience of first love, nonetheless a summertime first love. 17-year old Elio Perlman, played by the incomparably talented Timothée Chalamet, is spending his summer in his family’s Italian villa, as his father, an esteemed professor of philosophy, (played by the incredible Michael Stuhlbarg) is preparing to welcome their annual summer guest, a student looking to work on their doctoral manuscripts with his help. Fortunately and unfortunately, it just so happens to be a gorgeous and intelligent 24-year old American boy named Oliver, (played by Armie Hammer) who charms Elio’s family almost right away. And as for Elio? I would say there was a lot more than charm that happened to his young heart.

La Bastide de Marie.Provence.France

The first instant Elio meets Oliver, he is simultaneously put off by and drawn to Oliver’s prominent self-assuredness, as he magnetically exudes confidence in everything he does, from his swaggering walk to his curt “Later!” whenever he says goodbye. In stark contrast, Elio, awkwardly lanky and anti-social, is very immature and insecure in himself. In the scene in which Oliver and Elio’s father discuss the Latin root of the word apricot, the fruit which just so happens to be Oliver’s confident favorite, it is revealed that it is also the root of the word ‘precocious’ or “premature,” as Oliver puts it. This ingeniously subtle hint to the core of the characters can only be a testament to the inspiringly thoughtful Luca Guadagnino, the maestro, or director, of the film. And so, as the long summer days drag on with a warm lull, the tensions between the two likewise grow, but with an increasingly exciting spark of longing and desire. They are equally fascinated by each other, Elio by Oliver’s self-confidence in his intelligence and uncanny ability to make friends with anyone, and Oliver by Elio’s self-confidence in his artistic talents and uncanny ability to act so maturely at such an immature age. Or in other words, he ‘likes the way he says things.’

But because of Elio’s innate, youthful insecurity, he hesitates. He finds himself obsessing over Oliver, thinking about him all the time, categorizing the colors of his swim trunks, showing off his musical talents to him on the piano and the guitar, biking with him into town, even finding pieces of him in the books he reads. “Is it better to speak or to die?” Elio reads, and with his family’s prompting, he decides to speak. When Elio reveals his feelings, Oliver is surprised, but not put off. He lets Elio show him his favorite spot, a small, quiet pond surrounded by the tranquility of the shadows and the warmth from the sun. The two meet on the grassy banks of the pond, resulting in the meeting of lips between Elio and Oliver. The two merges, become one; Elio finds newfound confidence from expressing his feelings and Oliver finds newfound insecurity wriggling out from under his facade of confirmed straight sexuality. So Oliver breaks the kiss, but he does not break the spell; Elio asks him to meet at midnight after a few days of dreadful silence, to which Oliver agrees.

And finally, at long last, both of them shamelessly reveal their feelings for each other and spend an intimate night together, within which Oliver whispers across the pillow to Elio, “Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine.” At that moment, a rarity of a bond was formed, one of such intense intimacy and understanding that each of them felt as if they could be the other because they understood each other so well; or that, each of them felt as if they could be one person altogether because they loved each other so much. But it was only when it was too late did they realize it was too late. “We wasted so many days,” Oliver lamented despairingly to Elio not long after their union. This sudden premonition caused them to reflect back on all “the signs” they gave each other, from Oliver’s attempting to relax Elio’s tense back to when they viewed ancient archaeological statues with Elio’s father, which led to the start of their friendship; however, reflecting upon the stretched-out time they waited too long to use wouldn’t change the fact that the time they now had left together was stretched too thin.

Sony Pictures Classics via almay stock photo

But from peachy kisses to billowy shirts to Elio wearing Oliver’s Jewish necklace, their short time of established love was endlessly impactful, intimate, and life-changing. Despite knowing that it would end, that Oliver would have to go back to the States and Elio back to his family, the two used that miserable notion to fuel one last trip together, a few nights in Rome, a few nights in the Eternal City. Because even though their time together was short-lived, their love for each other was eternal, forever remembered, and commemorated in the deepest parts of their hearts. So when Elio and Oliver kissed for one of the last times on a dark, cobbled street on a late night in Rome, the shadows may have slipped away to the sun one time before, Oliver would leave one time before, but they both knew something. And if they had gotten to say it aloud, it would have sounded like: “I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am tonight” (F. Scott Fitzgerald).

And so when the shadows did slip away to the morning after that night, and Oliver did leave after one final embrace with Elio, neither regretted it. Their hearts were shattered, their eyes streaming, but the spell was still not broken, and the pond they once visited laid peacefully untouched. The audience at this point, however, would be crying while their hearts ached for the two lost lovers; the beautiful film score did not help to ebb the flow of this, as Sufjan Stevens’ heavenly, heartfelt music uncannily narrated the story while classical music such as Une Barque Sur L'océan from Miroirs set the tempo and pace of their love, from its lulling beginning to its whirling finish. (And let’s not forget the brilliantly accurate 80’s-Italian music which painted a vivid picture of the film’s setting.) Nonetheless, the real stars of the film were the stars themselves, as Timothée Chalamet’s extraordinary performance can be seen in his fluid switching between three different languages, impressive mastery of two different instruments, and raw portrayal of the emotional aches and sores of first love. Hammer perfectly captures the stereotypical self-confidence of a young American man, while also weaving throughout subtle but powerful hints of Oliver’s deep insecurity in himself and his sexuality. And of course, the always-excellent Michael Stuhlbarg creates a warm, accepting, wise father to Elio through his loving acceptance of Elio’s sexuality and his supportive words of wisdom, which are given a powerful monologue at the end of the film. His heart-wrenching talk with Elio serves to give a final emphasis upon the film’s message: that “if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it.” He explains that this is because “we rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!”

And so, in the final minutes of the film, when a time-jump reveals a new winter, Elio and his parents receive a call from Oliver, who tells them that he is getting married in the spring in the States. Though Elio’s wound is reopened from this news, he softly speaks his own name through the receiver, waiting for a response. “Oliver” whispers back. And it is the following statement, “I remember everything,” which allows Elio to hang up, stare into the fire, cry, reminisce, feel the heat of the flames and his tears on his cheeks, feel the heartache deep inside his gut while the credits roll over his face and the audience cries with him -- and look straight into the camera with a soft smile smeared across his face.

Sony Pictures Classics

If you ever wonder why Call Me By Your Name is so transcendent, think of how it answered the unanswered question presented in every heartbreak film ever made: Was the pain worth it? Was the heartache, the heartbreak, the emptiness, worth the love that caused it?

And to this, the film answers with a resounding yes…’tis better to speak.

Writer: Emily Hamilly

Website: Human Central

Date: 29 April 2021