Call Me By Your Name
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Being a fan of mostly action cinema, and plot heavy thrillers makes it feel as if Call Me By Your Name has no plot what so ever. But it is a mistake. Luca Guadagnino is a kind of director that tends to film very subtle movies. But if you are paying attention and you are invested in the characters themselves, those movies tend to have very strong effects. This is why I love Call Me By Your Name so much. It is as if I went on a vacation to Italy myself and spent my time with the characters of this movie. As if I had become their friend. And as if I myself got invested in their day to day little struggles.
In the age of LGBTQP+ this movie scares a lot of people on the right side of the political spectrum. It is a love story between two men. Actually I am lying. It is a love story between a man and a teenage boy. He is deliberately illegal. I think it is a kind of Luca Guadagnino's method of making us feel the same amount of paranoia that people of their sexual orientation might feel. There is a scene where Oliver, the older man, doubts that Elliot, the teenage boy, has any feelings for him for real. He thinks that perhaps the stuff that they did last night were a kind of way for the boy to take control over him, or something. And even that paranoia aspect of the film is very subtly communicated by Guadagnino. If you wonder off a little bit too much, you will miss it.
The movie is perhaps a bit too subtle. But that is a kind of quality a movie should have in some way. The subtlety of this film makes you loose some things about it. And I think it's very much intentional. So the next time around, when you re-watch it, you feel like you have discovered something new.
This movie is one of those multi-lingual experiences. People speak English sometimes. Sometimes they decide to speak Italian. Sometimes they speak French. Sometimes it's German. And the whole cast of characters is like that. You can follow the movie without any subtitles. I just watched it without subtitles and it was okay. But some scenes were like watching people talk a different language. I personally don't mind a little guessing. I mean I watch films from India and Thailand without any form of translation and if a director is good I will still be able to follow the plot. Luca Guadagnino is that good. He directs good enough and actors emote good enough that you don't need no dialog to understand what is going on.
The dialogue in this movie is a lot of fun too. I like it when a scene is written in such a way where as an audience member you are an active participant. I remember a scene from Pulp Fiction when they talk about pork and somebody says something funny. It is both funny for the audience. And the actors are laughing too. And there is a line in the dialogue acknowledging that it is funny. Which is something very risky to try to do. What if the joke doesn't land? But when it does work, it works wonderfully. Call Me By Your Name has stuff like that. There is a scene where one of the characters is reading a passage from a thing he wrote. And it doesn't make any sense to him. And it doesn't make any sense to me, watching it, either. And it's not like one of those scenes where a scientist is talking on a science language and somebody asks him to speak English instead. Those I can follow. Often, those science things are very simple. Here it's a really confusing piece of philosophy that stops having any meaning half way through but sound like something somebody would have written with intend of having meaning. And the scene is not about understanding it. But about being confused by it.
The movie is borderline pornographic. Well, kind of. The most you will see is tits. Which is weird, because it is a movie about gays. Though the only actual nudity is a female breast. Teenage breast! Illegal teenage breast. Luca Guadagnino doesn't give a damn. But the non-nude sexual stuff is borderline pornographic anyway. Like the shot will be composed to conceal private parts. But they are there in the actor's face. Like there is a shot of Elliot simply grabbing the ball-sack of Oliver. No trickery. Real grab, done for real. Though Oliver is wearing shorts in that scene. So you don't see the ball-sack itself. Just feel the grab of it through the clothes. The actors of the teenagers in fact were a bit older than the characters they were playing. Which speaks a lot about the casting of the movie. Elliot played by Timothee Chalamet was like 19 I think while making the movie. But he plays a 16-17 year old. So it was legal for Chalamet to grab Oliver's ball-sack. Oliver was played by Armie Hammer.
Toward the middle of the movie there is a scene with a peach. I wrote a whole thing about that particular scene in a different post of mine. It's that good.
Guadagnino is good at realistically portraying sex. And I'm not talking about the pornography of the act. I'm talking about the tension and the nervousness. The playful unsureness of it all. The awkwardness of not knowing what to do next. The silliness of doing something from which you will feel shame, shame which you will disregard immediately since you are horny. And the roler-coaster of emotions that comes right after. This movie has a very emotionally realistic first sex scene with a girl. And then a very emotionally realistic first sex scene with a guy. Don't ask me how I know.
The film fills you up with so much joy that it's devastating to have the film be over. I was expecting a tense drama about how they should conceal themselves from Elliot's parents or whatever. And there is a little bit of it. But then the father just kind of knows and is okay with it immediately. There is nothing actually terrible happening. You can say that Elliot cheated his girlfriend with Oliver. That is probably the worst part. And even with that she, I assume, is forgiving him. ( Though to be frank, they speak French so I have no idea what they are talking about ).
I can explain why this movie works by drawing a parallel between it and the swimming scenes in Avatar 2. They are pointless on paper, but they give the movie so much atmosphere that you never want them to end. Call Me By Your Name is just the swimming scenes from Avatar 2. Nothing else. And it is brilliant.
I guess I have to touch on the directing style. There are a few Spielberg oners in this film. You know, long shots that are done in such a way that you don't notice that they are long shots. Guadagnino knows what he is doing. Though it seems like the budget ( $ 3.5 million ) was very limiting. Most scenes feel like the only gear they had was a tripod. The camera only pivots. Very rarely does the camera moves anywhere though space. There are a few high impact, good looking, smooth camera moves. But they are very rare. Most of the moves are on tripod. If there are any moves at all.
There is an epic scene that would probably not wow too many people. It is subtly epic. It is a long take of Elliot playing the same melody on a piano using different styles. All of it done for real. And not only did Chalamet learn how to play piano for that. He also acts his ass off. This is the kind of shit this movie is very good at. Subtle Epicness.
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