Summer loves have something tremendously special that pull us towards them even though we know they have an expiration date. That warm freshness, typical of a pop song, of the bubbles that come out when you open a soda, of the desire to be stuck and dance even if you don’t take off the heat. At the right age, they mark you for life.
It is something that Luca Guadagnino aspires to capture (and achieves in a big way) in the film that it came at the perfect time in everything. In definitively bringing out Timothée Chalamet’s talent, in making the most of Armie Hammer before devouring himself, in culminating his bucolic views of the sunny Italian villas. ‘Call Me By Your Name’ was quite a triumph.
love my way
Already available streaming on Amazon Prime Video as well as on HBO Max, the Italian film shows us a 17-year-old boy enjoying the eighties summer in northern Italy. One day a handsome American man arrives in the area who goes to assist his archaeologist father while developing his thesis. His American arrogance provokes some rejection from the young man, but little by little they developing a mutual emotion that they will not be able to contain.
Guadagnino’s cinema is quite sensory, accentuating emotions from images and sounds in a special way. That is why her threats towards terror are experienced in a very visceral way, despite the cold and gray appearance that she perceives at first. It is also a cinema beguiled by beauty, sometimes inaccessible due to its quality but also due to its tendency to explore characters devoid of social contexts and bathed in economic prosperity.
However, ‘Call Me By Your Name’ does not feel distant and inaccessible, quite the contrary. The characters are beautifully told, like the evolution of their relationship, filming them closely, letting us listen to what lies between the silences. The interactions are special and captivating, with two actors superbly directed so that you never miss a moment full of life and interest.
‘Call Me By Your Name’: love through all the senses
A movie as capable of generating moments as of finding them. Those exchanges of glances, those frictions at the town festival while the eighties synthesizers sound. And also moments like a crucial monologue by Michael Stuhlbarg that overwhelms the heart with the honesty that shines and does not feel manipulative in the worst sense.
It is certainly an unrepeatable film for many reasons, including the course of the careers of the main attractions (the main actors and the director). That’s why it’s a great movie to retrieve and savor while streaming. The summery effervescence that it transmits works even in a moment of cold snap.
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