Call Me by Your Name (2017) Review

Time: 132 Minutes
Age Rating: Sex scenes
Cast
Timothée Chalamet as Elio Perlman
Armie Hammer as Oliver
Michael Stuhlbarg as Mr. Perlman
Amira Casar as Annella Perlman
Esther Garrel as Marzia
Victoire Du Bois as Chiara
Director: Luca Guadagnino

It’s the summer of 1983, and precocious 17-year-old Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet) is spending the days with his family at their 17th-century villa in Lombardy, Italy. He soon meets Oliver (Armie Hammer), a handsome doctoral student who’s working as an intern for Elio’s father. Amid the sun-drenched splendor of their surroundings, Elio and Oliver discover the heady beauty of awakening desire over the course of a summer that will alter their lives forever.

I heard a lot of excellent things about Call Me by Your Name, it is one of the big awards movies of 2017. So, I had high hopes while keeping my expectations in check before going into it. Before I continue I will confess that I don’t exactly love this movie. Not that there’s anything majorly wrong with Call Me by Your Name, I just really wasn’t invested in much of the movie as I should’ve been. However, I still do think that this is still a good movie, with some solid performances, and excellent direction.

Call Me by Your Name is based off a book, I haven’t read the book so I can’t comment on how they compare. Honestly there’s not much that I can say about this movie. If I was to pinpoint the main reason I didn’t love this movie was that I didn’t have any sort of connection with the romance, story or the characters. Don’t get me wrong, I can like romance movies, the Before Trilogy, Carol, La La Land, I really love them. However, there’s something missing here and it’s the emotional connection. The romance here is more subtle but there are films who have more subtle romances but you really feel an emotional connection (Carol being a strong example). Here I didn’t feel emotionally connected to the romance at all, while the characters aren’t unlikable, I didn’t care about them and how things would end. It seems didn’t quite have the emotional impact on me that it did on others, I was just watching events and the romance progress and I hate to say is but I was very indifferent to the whole thing. This movie is a little long at 2 hours and 10 minutes but I don’t think the problem is the length, it was more so the fact that I just wasn’t invested in this story. My general feeling of this movie is that its just fine. Thankfully the rest of the movie has much stronger elements.

The acting is all pretty good. Timothée Chalamet is great as the lead character, who is going through his coming of age story and discovering his sexuality. Armie Hammer also does a good job and both Chalamet and Hammer have good chemistry. Despite Chalamet and Hammer being pretty good, to me the stand out performance to me was from Michael Stahlburg as Chalamet’s father. There is a particular scene in the third act with him that people are raving over and it is well deserved because he was fantastic.

Even though I don’t love Call Me by Your Name, I have to strongly praise the excellent direction by Luca Guadagnino. The cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom is absolutely beautiful, they really makes use of its location in Italy. The music is also great, especially the score by Sufjan Stevens. Directionwise I have no issues.

Despite everything that I said, I do think that Call Me by Your Name is a solid movie. The performances are good (especially from Stahlburg) and the direction was absolutely beautiful. It’s just that although some aspects about the romance worked (including and especially the leads’ chemistry), I felt emotionally disconnected and I really didn’t care too much about what was going on. And the romance is such an integral part of the movie so that really brought it down for me. I’m probably part of a small minority when it comes to this movie however, most people love it and I think that it is worth watching for yourself.

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