Movie Review: Call Me By Your Name (English)

In what's undoubtedly an affecting tale of erotic awakening, first love and inevitable heartbreak, Luca Guadagnino delivers a sumptuous visual treat in Call Me By Your Name (adapted from André Aciman's 2007 novel of the same name). Set in the early 1980s over the course of an Italian midsummer, the film, just like his previous vacation-thriller A Bigger Splash, revels in its erotic languor and sensuously seductive textures without ever being explicit, even as it explores themes of friendship, longing and desire, and vies with God's Own Country for being one of the most moving and liberating gay romances in many a moon. Drawing viewers into a world that is at once realistic and dreamlike in its detail and pictorial richness, Call Me By Your Name is so stunningly crafted it makes it easy to get swept in their chemistry, even as it gains more emotional heft in its final moments. The closing shot of Elio (a terrific Timothée Chalamet) staring into the fireplace with tears pooling in his eyes as Sufjan Stevens' Visions of Gideon plays in the background is a vision that will forever be etched on the back my mind!