Luca Guadagnino".
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.
It is very hard to describe the style of Luca Guadagnino, the director of Bones And All. His films are very good. But it seems like he is not interested in plot, which is weird, considering that the movies are good. He is famous for his erotic dramas, films centered around a sexual tension between people, like his perhaps most acclaimed movie Call Me By Your Name, in which all the substance comes from very subtle things. A character looks a certain way on another character. Or perhaps holds onto another character's hand for way too long. And you have to piece together all these little clues to even start feeling some kind of presence of a plot. Because if you don't pay attention it all looks like people just casually hanging out. And then suddenly a payoff happens, which would make sense only if you paid attention to the little clues.
I was skeptical of Luca Guadagnino's films like Call Me By Your Name until I saw them. It felt like Luca is making high brow dramas that are designed solely as tear-squeezers that appeal to contemporary politics. But then I saw his movies. From Call Me By Your Name to instant horror classics like Bones And All he proved time and time again that he is truly great. His movies are insanely visceral emotional roller-coasters that are not afraid to be sincere, while every other movie these days cannot take anything seriously. But then came a trailer of Luca Guadagnino making a movie about Tennis.
They had a habit of picking a movie at random. That day Sheiny wanted to choose one herself. Mr. Humbert showed her the drawer of film reels. And asked her to choose one. She inserted her hand into the drawer of 16:9 movies, without looking. She knew that she is choosing a 16:9 film. Everybody agreed on it already. She took out her hand grabbing a 35 mm print of "Call Me By Your Name" directed by Luca Guadagnino. There was no poster, no trailer. Just a name and a director's name written with a marker on the casing of the film.
While on the other hand European movies are more open about sexuality. Directors from Europe like Danish filmmakers Lars Von Trier and Nicolas Winding Refn, French Luc Besson, Maïmouna Doucouré and Gaspar Noé, Italian Luca Guadagnino and many others are notorious for near pornographic ( if not entirely pornographic ) depictions of sex or explorations of sexual taboos in films like Nymphomaniac, The Neon Demon, Léon: The Professional, Cuties, Love and Call Me By Your Name to name a few.