Call Me by Your Name is a 2017 romantic coming-of-age drama film directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by James Ivory, based on the 2007 novel of the same name by André Aciman. It is the final installment in Guadagnino's thematic Desire trilogy, following I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015). Set in Northern Italy in 1983, Call Me by Your Name chronicles the romantic relationship between Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a 17-year-old living in Italy, and his father's American assistant, Oliver (Armie Hammer). The film also stars Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, and Victoire Du Bois.
Call Me by Your Name began development in 2007, when producers Peter Spears and Howard Rosenman optioned the screen rights to Aciman's novel. Ivory had been set to co-direct the film, but ended up writing the script and producing instead. Guadagnino, who came on board as a location consultant, eventually became director and producer. The film was financed by several international companies, and principal photography mainly took place in Crema, Italy in May and June 2016. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom shot the film on 35-mm film.
Call Me by Your Name was picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics before its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival on 22 January 2017. It began a limited release in the United States on 24 November 2017, before going wide on 19 January 2018. The film received widespread critical acclaim and numerous accolades, with praise for its performances, screenplay, direction, and music. At the 90th Academy Awards, it was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Chalamet), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song ("Mystery of Love"). At the 23rd Critics' Choice Awards, Ivory won Best Adapted Screenplay. Chalamet was also nominated for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor.
Video Call Me by Your Name (film)
Plot
Elio, a seventeen-year-old Jewish American-Italian boy, lives in the northern Italian countryside with his parents. His father, a professor of archaeology, invites an American Jewish graduate student, Oliver, to live with his family during the summer of 1983 and help with his academic paperwork. Elio, an introspective bibliophile and musical prodigy, finds little in common with Oliver, whose carefree and exuberant personality contrasts with his own. Elio also resents vacating his bedroom for the duration of Oliver's stay. Elio spends much of the summer reading books and hanging out with his girlfriend, Marzia, while Oliver is attracted to one of the local girls, much to Elio's chagrin.
Elio and Oliver begin to spend time with each other, and a seductive courtship emerges--they swim together, go for long walks in the town, and accompany Elio's father on an archaeological trip. Although Elio begins a sexual relationship with Marzia and brags about it in front of Oliver to gauge his reaction, he increasingly finds himself attracted to Oliver. He sneaks into Oliver's room to smell his bathing suit and thinks about him while masturbating. During a trip to the post office, Elio subtly confesses his feelings to Oliver, who gently tells him that he should not act on them. When they go swimming one day, Elio kisses Oliver on the lips. Oliver returns the kiss but is reluctant to go further. The pair subsequently grow distant during the next few days.
In response to a note from Elio, Oliver leaves a note on Elio's desk telling Elio to meet him at midnight. Elio spends the day with Marzia, all the while longing to see Oliver. Finally, at midnight, he approaches Oliver on the patio. The two make love for the first time. During the next few days, they grow closer, having sex frequently while keeping their relationship secret. In bed, Oliver tells Elio, "Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine". They become more intimate both physically and emotionally. On one occasion, Elio ejaculates into a peach that he has split open, and when Oliver discovers it, he tries to take a bite of the peach in front of a humiliated Elio, who begs him not to. Completely smitten with Oliver by this point, Elio starts avoiding Marzia.
With the end of Oliver's stay imminent, the couple find themselves overcome by uncertainty and longing. Elio's parents, conscious of the bond between the two, recommend they take a trip to Bergamo together before Oliver goes back to America. They spend three romantic days together, after which Oliver leaves, and a heartbroken Elio returns home. He encounters a sympathetic Marzia, who still wants to be his friend, and his father, seeing how forlorn his son is, tells him that he was aware of Elio's affair with Oliver. He confesses to having come close to his own love affair with a friend in his youth, and urges Elio to find pleasure in the grief, since true love of the kind Elio and Oliver shared is rare.
During Hanukkah, Elio receives a phone call from Oliver, who tells Elio and his family that he is engaged to be married. After the phone call, a pained Elio sits by the fireplace. A parade of emotions crosses his face as his parents and the house staff prepare a holiday dinner.
Maps Call Me by Your Name (film)
Cast
Production
Development
After seeing an early galley of André Aciman's debut novel Call Me by Your Name in 2007, American producers Peter Spears and Howard Rosenman bought the screen rights to it before it was published. Before developing it into a film, the two invited their friend James Ivory to work as an executive producer on the adaptation, which he accepted. Spears and Rosenman read the book independently and produced it in 2008. They soon found themselves in development hell: they met with three different sets of directors and writers--including Gabriele Muccino, Ferzan Özpetek and Sam Taylor-Johnson--but could not find anyone who would commit to the project. Scheduling around the need to shoot in Italy during the summer also proved difficult.
The producers reached out to Luca Guadagnino and lined him up as their first choice to direct, but he declined, citing a busy schedule. A native of northern Italy, he was first hired as a location consultant instead, to help "put the movie together from the Italian side." Guadagnino later suggested that he co-direct the film with Ivory--without any contractual agreement yet in place. Ivory accepted the offer, and spent between six and nine months in 2014 working on the screenplay. Guadagnino, who has described the novel as "a Proustian book about remembering the past and indulging in the melancholy of lost things," wrote the adaptation with Ivory, while also collaborating with Walter Fasano to "really fine-tune it". It took place at Ivory's house, Guadagnino's kitchen table in Crema, and sometimes in New York. Ivory hardly met the director during the process, as Guadagnino was busy making A Bigger Splash (2015).
The screenplay was completed in late 2015 and early 2016. It was approved by Aciman, who commended the adaptation as "direct, [...] real and persuasive." He added, "as the writer I found myself saying, 'Wow, they've done better than the book'". The completed screenplay was vital in securing funding for the film's production. Among the financiers were the production companies La Cinéfacture (France); Frenesy Film Company (Italy, owned by Guadagnino); M.Y.R.A. Entertainment (United States); RT Features (Brazil), and Water's End Productions (United States)--along with the support of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. During negotiations, the production budget was reduced from $12 million to $3.5 million.
In 2016, Ivory stepped down from directing to avoid conflicts, leaving Guadagnino to direct the film alone. According to Ivory, financiers from Memento Films International didn't want to have two directors involved in the project, as they "thought it would be awkward [...] It might take longer, it would look terrible if we got in fights on the set, and so on." Guadagnino has said that Ivory's version would have likely been "a much more costly [and] different film"--one which, in fact, could not have been made, because of "market realities". Ivory became the solely credited screenwriter, and subsequently sold the rights to the screenplay to Guadagnino's company. It marks Ivory's first produced screenplay since Le Divorce (2003), and the only narrative feature that he has only written, not directed. Despite that, Ivory was "very much involved" with other aspects of the production. Guadagnino chose to dedicate the film to Bill Paxton--a friend of the director, Spears and his husband, Brian Swardstrom--after his death in February 2017.
Adaptation
Call Me by Your Name is the final installment in Guadagnino's thematic Desire trilogy, following I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015). The film represents a departure from his previous work, as on it he took a "non-aggressive" and simple approach; he has said this is "the most calm" movie he has made. Despite being a literary adaptation, many scenes in the film play out wordlessly. "Words are part of what's going on, but it's not necessarily what's going on underneath. I think this film celebrates the underneath," he said. Guadagnino considers the film an "homage to fathers," referring both to his own father and to four filmmakers who have inspired him--Jean Renoir, Jacques Rivette, Éric Rohmer, and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Guadagnino has described Call Me By Your Name as a family-oriented film for the purpose of "transmission of knowledge and hope that people of different generations come to see the film together." He never saw it as a "gay" movie, but rather calls it a film about the "beauty of the newborn idea of desire, unbiased and uncynical," and reflecting his motto of living "with a sense of joie de vivre", in which "we should always be very earnest with one's feelings, instead of hiding them or shielding ourselves". The director attempted to avoid the flaws he had seen in most coming-of-age films, in which growth is often portrayed as a result of resolving certain preconceived dilemmas--such as having to choose between two lovers. He also wanted the story to follow two people in the moment, rather than focus on an antagonist or a tragedy, a specific approach inspired by À Nos Amours (1983), directed by Maurice Pialat. As someone who considers sex in film a representation of the characters' behavior and identity, Guadagnino was not interested in including explicit sex scenes in the film, in order to keep the tone as planned, saying, "I wanted the audience to completely rely on the emotional travel of these people and feel first love [...] It was important to me to create this powerful universality, because the whole idea of the movie is that the other person makes you beautiful--enlightens you, elevates you."
The film differs from its source material in a number of ways. While the novel serves as a memory-piece from Elio's perspective, the filmmakers behind Call Me by Your Name chose to set the movie entirely in the present timeline, a "much more efficient" solution, to help the audience understand the characters and "reflect the essence of the book." The setting was changed from Bordighera to the countryside of Crema, Lombardy, where Guadagnino lives. He decided to push up the original setting from 1987 to 1983--which he explained was a year, "in Italy at least, when everything that was great about the '70s is definitely shut down", and one in which the characters "are in a way untouched by the corruption of the '80s--in the U.S., Reagan, and in the UK, Thatcher". Mr. Perlman's profession was refined by Ivory from a classics scholar to "an art historian/archeologist type."
Guadagnino was tempted to remove the scene from the novel in which Elio masturbates into a pitted peach, as he thought it was a metaphor for "sexual impulses and energy", and that it was too explicit. Timothée Chalamet was also nervous about the scene, describing it as the key to illuminating the character's "overabundant sexual energy". Despite their reservations, Guadagnino and Chalamet each tested the method by themselves, and both agreed that it worked, so the scene stayed in the film. A scene featuring Elio and Oliver's "enthusiastic" dancing to The Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way" in a small bar is not drawn from the book, but inspired by the time Guadagnino danced by himself in a bedroom when he was young.
In revising Ivory's draft of the script, Guadagnino removed the voice-over narration and a considerable amount of nudity. The director did not like the idea of having the main character tell the story retrospectively, stating that "it kills the surprise". Toward the end of the novel, the two protagonists go off on a trip to Rome together, which lasts an entire chapter with new characters in multiple locations. Because of the limited budget, Ivory and the producers came up with several variations, including the idea to have "everyone else leave and they are alone in the house"; and changed into "another kind of a little trip", where they spend "some time together away from the house". In his original script, Ivory depicted Elio in the final scene when he was decorating a Christmas tree with candles in his family's home. Ivory also had to cut down Mr. Perlman's speech, which was longer in the novel, but was committed to keeping it in the script. He described the scene where Elio conveys his feelings to Oliver as one of the most important moments, capturing the "euphoric passion and nervousness" of their first love.
Casting
In 2015, Shia LaBeouf and Greta Scacchi were reportedly set to be cast in the film. In September 2016, Ivory confirmed that LaBeouf and Scacchi were no longer involved in the project. According to Ivory, LaBeouf had gone to New York City to do a reading for the film, but the production company later felt he was unsuitable due to his "various troubles"; although Ivory thought the two "had good scenes together" and could have made it into the film, the company disagreed.
After seeing Armie Hammer's performance in The Social Network (2010), Guadagnino "fell in love" with him and cultivated his passion for Hammer and the movies he made afterwards. The director found him to be a "sophisticated actor, with a great range" and had him in mind for the role of Oliver. Hammer, who had expressed interest in Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash, met with the director years before the film went into production. When the actor got the script, he almost turned down the role because of the nudity that had been in that draft. "I did want to pass; it scared me," he said. "There's a lot of stuff here that I've never done on film before. But there's no way I can't do this [film], mostly because it scares me so much." According to Guadagnino, Hammer was going to pass on the role through his agent, but then changed his mind at the end of their conversation. This is the third film in which Hammer has played a homosexual character, following J. Edgar (2011) and Final Portrait (2017).
Chalamet had acted since he was a child and co-starred on Showtime's Homeland in 2012. The following year, Swardstrom--Spears' husband and agent--introduced the then 17-year-old Chalamet to Guadagnino, who immediately felt the actor had "the ambition, the intelligence, the sensitivity, the naivety, and the artistry" for the role of Elio. Chalamet read Aciman's novel by the time he was seventeen, and described it as "a window into a young person". Chalamet, who can speak fluent French and had played piano for years, arrived in Italy five weeks early to learn Italian, piano, and guitar.
Michael Stuhlbarg plays Mr. Perlman, Elio's father. The actor did not start reading the book until he had already joined the production. He was moved by the "many beautiful sentiments expressed" in the script when he first read it, including Mr. Perlman's "sense of generosity and love and understanding". Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, and Victoire Du Bois feature in supporting roles as Annella, Marzia, and Chiara, respectively. Casting director Stella Savino met Vanda Capriolo when she was biking in the countryside. The non-actor was later cast for the role of the maid, Mafalda. Aciman and Spears themselves also appear briefly in the roles of Mounir and Isaac, a gay couple who attend a dinner party. Aciman was asked to be in the movie after actors were ultimately unavailable. "It was a last-minute decision," Spears recalled, "Andr? turns out to be a phenomenal actor! So comfortable, not nervous at all. His wife was sitting there and said, 'I had no idea!'"
Hammer and Chalamet both signed contracts that prohibited full-frontal nudity. Ivory, whose original screenplay had contained "all sorts of nudity," was dismayed by the decision, criticizing what he saw as an "American" attitude. "Nobody seems to care that much or be shocked about a totally naked woman. It's the men," he said. Guadagnino, who remained involved in the casting, chose actors based on their performances and chemistry, rather than choosing to "investigate or label" their sexuality. He said, "The idea that you have to cast only someone who has a certain set of skills, and worse, a certain gender identity in any role: that's oppressive to me".
Filming and post-production
Principal photography on Call Me by Your Name lasted about 32-34 days. It began on 9 May 2016, shortly after A Bigger Splash was released in the United States, and was completed in June 2016. The process occurred quietly, with reports only appearing after filming had been underway for two weeks. The director's first cut of the film was four hours long. Post-production with regular editor Walter Fasano took only a month--between June and July, the fastest Guadagnino had edited.
The film was shot primarily in Crema and the province of Cremona. It was shot during an unexpected historic rainstorm in Italy, described by the weather reports as a "once-in-century rain." The pre-production in Crema was fast: a search for extras began there in March and April. Scenes from the nearby villages of Pandino and Moscazzano were filmed from 17 May, before moving to Crema on 1 June. Additional outdoor scenes were shot on 4 December 2016. Several historical locations in the surrounding streets in Crema and Pandino were chosen during production, including the arch of Torrazzo at the Crema Cathedral. Businesses received compensation for financial losses caused by the closure, scheduled for 30 and 31 May. Two days' filming at the cathedral were postponed due to the weather. Production in Crema cost EUR18,000, with a promotion campaign that cost EUR7,500.
Filming also took place in the Lodigiano area near Crespiatica, and two small towns in the immediate vicinity of Crema: Montodine and Ripalta. The archaeological discovery scene was filmed at the Grottoes of Catullus by Lake Garda in Sirmione. The trip to Bergamo was shot in multiple historical buildings, including the Bergamo Cathedral, the Santa Maria Maggiore, and the University of Sciences, Letters and Arts. The production team was only able to secure permission to film at the Cascate del Serio in Valbondione for half an hour, owing to concerns about security.
The actors lived in Crema and were able to absorb the rhythm of small-town life. Guadagnino engaged deeply with the cast and filmmakers, and often cooked and showed films for them in his house. Hammer and Chalamet, who did not have to do a screen test together, met for the first time during the production in Crema. They spent a month together before filming began, watched Mike Tyson documentaries and went to local restaurants, to build character development. "We'd hang out with each other all the time, because we were pretty much the only Americans there, and we were able to defend one another and really get to know one another," Chalamet recalled. In the first two days of production, Guadagnino sat down with the cast to read through the script. Hammer and Chalamet went to the kissing scene during the first rehearsal. The actors rehearsed their scenes every night before shooting, and spent several days shooting nude. "I've never been so intimately involved with a director before. Luca was able to look at me and completely undress me," Hammer said.
Guadagnino shot the film in chronological order, which allowed the filmmakers to "witness the onscreen maturity of both protagonist and actor". The scene where Mr. Perlman delivered an educational speech to Elio was filmed the day before shooting wrapped. Stuhlbarg spent months to prepare for the scene, one that Guadagnino wanted to make "as simple as possible" by taking less setups and "let the actors be." According to Fasano, the scene took three takes, where Stuhlbarg was "on three different levels of getting emotional." During the dancing sequence, Hammer had to perform in front of "50 extras off camera," with the music being turned down to record the dialogue. "That was not fun, I don't really enjoy dancing," Hammer said. The filmmakers laid a long camera dolly track and shot the scene where Elio confronts his feelings for Oliver in one take, to provide the flexibility and the "flow of emotion" that a cut scene could not. Chalamet was listening to "Visions of Gideon", one of the original songs written for the film, in an earpiece, while filming the final sequence, in which the director asked him to perform for three variations, one per take.
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who had previously collaborated with Guadagnino on Ferdinando Cito Filomarino's Antonia (2015), served as the director of photography. He read Aciman's novel before receiving the script, and spent time walking around filming locations to "get a feeling for everything [...] to see the color, to see how the light changed during the day, and input it into my data." Lighting is an important factor in Mukdeeprom's work, as he needs the light to be engaged with the characters. In order to capture the Northern Italian summer atmosphere for Call Me by Your Name, he had to create completely artificial light, due to the heavy rains that lasted the entirety of the shoot. Mukdeeprom had to adapt his technical approach to the weather condition, "so I had to order a package of lights. I ended up with 15Ks, down to 2.5," he said. The cinematographer also connected to the actors during the scene; when they finished shooting the first take of the confrontation between Oliver and Elio, Mukdeeprom was crying in a corner of the room. The film was shot using 35 mm film and a single lens, a decision influenced by the work of David Cronenberg in order to "solidif[y] the point of view," and make "the tension of the performance come off the screen."
Production design and costume
The main location for the Perlmans' residence was Villa Albergoni, an uninhabited 17th-century mansion in Moscazzano. The director initially wanted to buy the house but could not afford it, so he made a film at the place instead. A landscape designer was hired to organize an orchard in the mansion's garden. A pergola was shown on the patio, along with apricot and peach trees in the garden, which are not native to Lombardy.
Six weeks before production, the crew--including production designer Samuel Dehors and first-time set decorator Violante Visconti di Modrone--gradually decorated the house with furniture, objects, and decoration inspired by the characters. Much of the furniture, including the dishes and glassware from the '50s, belonged to Guadagnino and di Modrone's parents. "That made it cozy and personal," di Modrone said, "I wanted to give it the sense of time passing by." The Asian-inspired paintings, maps, and mirrors mostly came from an antiques store in Milan. Books used in background were published before 1982. The swimming pool used in the film was recreated from a watering trough common in the area.
In public places, the filmmakers set up faded political billboards to reflect the Italian general election in 1983, and re-created a newsstand full of magazines of that particular time. Guadagnino did not want the film to "look like a reflection on the 80s, [...] when it becomes period." His team performed extensive research, with an assist from the residents of Crema, by entering people's houses and collecting their pictures of the '80s. Chen Li, a Chinese woman who lives in Milan, served as graphic designer. She wrote the titles in the opening credits, in which the director used Xerox images of statues and placed them with Mr. Perlman's personal items.
Costume designer Giulia Piersanti avoided using period costumes, and wanted to provide "a sense of insouciant adolescent sensuality, summer heat and sexual awakening" to the characters. Several costume pieces from the film were made from scratch. The costumes were influenced by the work in French films Pauline at the Beach (1983), A Tale of Springtime (1990), and A Summer's Tale (1996). She took inspiration from her parents' photo albums for the Perlmans' wardrobe. For Oliver's "sexy, healthy American" image, Piersanti referred to "some of Bruce Weber's earliest photographs." His clothes change throughout the film as "he's more able to free himself." Aiming to emphasize Elio's confident style, she chose several Lacoste costumes, and a distinctive New Romantic-looking shirt in the final scene. Elio's polo shirt and Fido Dido T-shirt came from her husband's closet.
Soundtrack
Guadagnino normally selects the music for his films himself. The director wanted to find an "emotional narrator to the film" through music, a "less heavy, less present, and more enveloping" way than voice and text. He was inspired by the work in Barry Lyndon (1975), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and The Age of Innocence (1993). Guadagnino wanted the film's music to be connected to Elio, a young pianist who likes to transcribe and adapt pieces, in order to get close to Oliver. The music is used to reflect the time, the characters' family, level of education, and "the kind of canon they would be a part of". Guadagnino also researched what was popular on the radio that summer, so as to stay true to the time period.
Guadagnino found that the lyricism of Sufjan Stevens' work resonated with him. The director initially asked Stevens to narrate the film through the older Elio's perspective, and record an original song for Call Me by Your Name, "almost as a break in the narrative". Stevens declined the voiceover role, and eventually contributed three songs to the soundtrack: "Mystery of Love", "Visions of Gideon", and a new rendition of "Futile Devices" with piano. Stevens took inspiration from the script, the book, and conversations with the director about the characters. He submitted the songs a few days before shooting began. Surprised by the result, the director listened to them with the actors and Fasano on-set. Call Me by Your Name marks Stevens' first contributions to a feature film soundtrack. A soundtrack album was digitally released under Madison Gate Records and Sony Classical on 3 November 2017 and physically on 17 November. It features songs by Stevens, The Psychedelic Furs, Loredana Bertè, Bandolero, Giorgio Moroder, Joe Esposito, and F. R. David, with compositions by John Adams, Erik Satie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Maurice Ravel.
Release
Call Me by Your Name had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on 22 January 2017. Prior to its premiere, Sony Pictures Classics acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film for $6 million. The deal was negotiated by WME Global and UTA Independent Film Group. International distribution rights were purchased by Memento Films International, a French company, which showed the promo reel for the film at the American Film Market in November 2016. It was also screened at the Berlin International Film Festival on 13 February 2017, the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2017, and the New York Film Festival on 3 October 2017.
Call Me by Your Name began a limited release in the United Kingdom on 27 October 2017, and in the United States on 24 November 2017. It expanded from four to thirty locations in the United States on 15 December 2017, and then to 114 theaters on 22 December. It hit 174 theaters on 12 January 2018, before going into wide release, just days before the Oscar nomination announcement ceremony, on 19 January 2018, reaching 815 theaters. In Italy, it was opened on 25 January; with special screenings took place in Crema on 27 and 29 January. The film was opened in Brazil on 18 January, and will be released in France on 28 February 2018.
Call Me by Your Name is scheduled for digital download on 27 February 2018. It will be released on Blu-ray, DVD on 13 March 2018. Disc format bonus features audio commentary from the cast and filmmakers, behind the scenes gallery, and a music video for "Mystery of Love".
After its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, actor James Woods criticized the age disparity between Elio and Oliver on Twitter, accusing the film of "chip[ping] away the last barriers of decency," and equating it to the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a pedophilia advocacy organization. Hammer responded by criticizing Woods' relationship with Kristen Bauguess--who started dating Woods in 2013 when she was 20 years old and he was 66 years old--saying, "Didn't you date a 19 year old when you were 60?" In an interview for The Hollywood Reporter, Hammer explained "We weren't trying to make some salacious, predatory movie. The age of consent in Italy is 14. So, to get technical, it's not illegal there [...] But this isn't a normal situation: The younger guy goes after the older guy. The dynamic is not older-predator-versus-younger-boy." He further said Woods "had no moral high ground to stand on and was cheapening what we did."
Marketing
Sony Pictures Classics debuted an official poster for Call Me by Your Name on 28 July 2017. The first theatrical trailer was released on 1 August 2017. On 11 October 2017, Sony Pictures Classics released a teaser titled "Dance Party" to celebrate National Coming Out Day. The 42-second clip, which consists of one continuous shot of Hammer and Chalamet dancing to "Love My Way" at a bar, became a meme on Twitter. Due to its placement in the snippet, "Love My Way" also gained streaming popularity, rose 13% on on-demand streams in two months before the film release. In the week ending 30 November 2017, the song collected 177,000 on-demand streams, its biggest streaming week in the country.
Reaction to the advertisement on social media was somewhat negative, largely for Sony Pictures' "misleading" use of a still of Chalamet and Garrel instead of focusing on the protagonist's relationship. Daniel Megarry of Gay Times described it as "an attempt to 'straight-wash' the movie's predominant same-sex romance", while Benjamin Lee of The Guardian called it a "disastrous attempt to push Oscar-buzzed Call Me by Your Name as a straight love story," and said the advert "belies an industry awkwardly denying queerness". Sony Pictures Classics later aired several commercial spots to promote the film during its nationwide expansion on 19 January 2018.
Reception
Box office
As of February 10, 2018, Call Me by Your Name has grossed $13.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $11 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $24 million, against a production budget of $3.5 million. The film is Sony Pictures Classics third-highest grossing 2017 release.
In the United States, the film began its limited run on 24 November 2017 at four theaters: The Paris Theater and Union Square Theatre in New York City, and the ArcLight Hollywood and Landmark Theater in Los Angeles. The film made $404,874 in its opening weekend--a per-theater average of $101,219. It was the highest average of 2017, the biggest since that of La La Land the previous December, and had the best per-screen opening for a gay romance film since Brokeback Mountain (2005). In its second weekend, the film grossed $281,288, with an "excellent" per-screen average of $70,320. The film expanded to nine theaters in its third weekend, grossing $291,101 for a "solid" $32,345 per-theater average. It earned $491,933 from 30 theaters in its fourth weekend, averaging $16,398.
The film expanded to 114 theaters in its fifth week and grossed $850,736, averaging $7,463 per screen. It made $702,098 in 115 theaters in its sixth weekend, averaging $6,105. The film crossed $6 million in its seventh weekend, earning $758,726 from 115 locations. It grossed $715,559 from 174 theaters in its eight weekend, averaging $4,185 per screen. In its nationwide release week, ninth weekend overall, the film grossed $1.4 million from 815 theaters, an underperformance compare to "some of its competition with similar theater counts". The following weekend, following the announcement of its four Oscar nominations, the film dropped 6% to $1.3 million. The film grossed $1,000,790 from 581 locations in its eleventh weekend, averaging $1,723. In its twelveth weekend, it grossed $683,460, averaging $1,439 from 475 theaters.
In the United Kingdom, the film opened on 27 October 2017 and earned £231,995 ($306,000) in its opening weekend, from 112 screens, including £4,000 from previews. After ten days, it had made a total of £568,000 ($745,000), before reaching the $1 million mark (£767,000) in its third weekend. As of 1 February 2018, the film has grossed $1,944,869 in the United Kingdom.
Critical response
After its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Call Me by Your Name was met with critical acclaim. It received a ten-minute standing ovation at its New York Film Festival screening at the Alice Tully Hall, the longest recorded in the festival's history. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 96% based on 257 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Call Me by Your Name offers a melancholy, powerfully affecting portrait of first love, empathetically acted by Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer." It was the best-reviewed limited release and second best-reviewed romance film of 2017 on the site. As of 1 February 2018, it is Rotten Tomatoes' best-reviewed romance film, the second best-reviewed drama film, and the fifth best-reviewed film overall, based on its adjusted score. On Metacritic, the film has an average weighted score of 93 out of 100, based on 51 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". It was the year's fifth-best rated film on Metacritic.
Writing in The Hollywood Reporter, Boyd van Hoeij described Call Me by Your Name as an "extremely sensual [...] intimate and piercingly honest" adaptation of Aciman's novel. He further called Chalamet's performance "the true breakout of the film". Peter Debruge of Variety said the film "advances the canon of gay cinema" by portraying "a story of first love [...] that transcends the same-sex dynamic of its central couple." He compared Guadagnino's "sensual" direction to the films of Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon, while putting the film "on par with the best of their work." David Ehrlich of IndieWire also praised his direction, which helps the film in "match[ing] the artistry and empathy" of Carol (2015) and Moonlight (2016). Sam Adams of BBC stated that Stuhlbarg's performance "puts a frame around the movie's painting and opens up avenues we may not have thought to explore," and called it "one of his finest" to date. He extolled the work as one of "many movies that have so successfully appealed to both the intellectual and the erotic since the heydays of Patrice Chéreau and André Téchiné."
Sam C. Mac of Slant gave the film three out of four stars, commended the director's "emphatic visual energy," and wrote that the coming-of-age story "is deeply concerned with the salvation found in the meditative power of the arts". David Morgan of CBS praised the cinematography, production design and costuming for "making a summer in the 1980s palpably alive again." He also applauded the "remarkably attuned" performances by Hammer and Chalamet, and described Stuhlbarg's character as "the most forward-thinking parent in movie history." Richard Lawson felt that Guadagnino's adaptation "was made with real love, with good intentions, with a clarity of heart and purposeful, unpretentious intellect" and hailed it as a "modern gay classic", in his Vanity Fair review. Time Out's Joshua Rothkopf called it "a triumphant, heartbreaking tale of coming out," and compared it positively with Brokeback Mountain, Carol and Moonlight.
The Economist noted the tension "between pain and pleasure" in the film, and praised Chalamet, specifying that he "evokes so many shades of humanity, portraying a path of youthful self-discovery that is more raw, unhinged, and ultimately honest than many actors could manage." Olly Richards of Empire called the film a "full-hearted romantic masterpiece". He commended the screenplay as "elegant and full of small surprises", and also praised Chalamet's performance, writing that "In a film in which every performance is terrific, Chalamet makes the rest look like they're acting. He alone would make the film worth watching, but he's just one of countless reasons." Donald Clarke of The Irish Times felt that the film benefited from Ivory's "subtle" script and the "exotic urgency" of Guadagino's vision. Kate Taylor of Globe and Mail gave the film two and a half stars, and praised the "exquisite" romantic tension and Chalamet's work in capturing "first love and its inevitable heartbreak", but felt that the "multilingual, almost-pre-AIDS idyll does not stretch credulity."
Accolades
Call Me by Your Name was selected by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute as one of the top 10 films of the year. At the 90th Academy Awards, it was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Chalamet), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song ("Mystery of Love"). Chalamet became the youngest Best Actor nominee since 1939, while Ivory became the oldest man to be nominated for a competitive award in history. The film received four nominations at the 71st British Academy Film Awards for Best Film, Best Director for Guadagnino, Best Leading Actor for Chalamet and Best Adapted Screenplay for Ivory. At the 75th Golden Globe Awards, it was nominated for Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama for Chalamet, and Best Supporting Actor for Hammer. It received eight nominations at the 23rd Critics' Choice Awards, with Ivory winning Best Adapted Screenplay.
The film led the 33rd Independent Spirit Awards with most nominations, garnering six, among them Best Feature, Best Director, Best Male Lead, Best Supporting Male, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing. At the 23rd Screen Actors Guild Awards, Chalamet received a nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role. The film garnered four nominations at the 71st British Academy Film Awards: Best Film, Best Direction, Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The National Board of Review, the Gotham Independent Film Awards and the Hollywood Film Awards awarded Chalamet with their Breakout Actor Awards.
Potential sequel
Guadagnino has deliberated over the idea of a sequel since the film's premiere at Sundance, when he realized the characters "could go beyond the boundaries of the film." In October 2017, he stated that he hoped to make a sequel to the film in 2020, suggesting it might be in the style of François Truffaut's The Adventures of Antoine Doinel series, while telling the story of Oliver and Elio as they aged. "If I paired the age of Elio in the film with the age of Timothée, in three years' time, Timothée will be 25, as would Elio by the time the second story was set," he said. In the novel, Elio and Oliver reunited 15 years later, when Oliver is married. Guadagnino specified that in the sequel, "I don't think Elio is necessarily going to become a gay man. He hasn't found his place yet. I can tell you that I believe that he would start an intense relationship with Marzia again." Guadagnino is also interested in the politics of the 1990s, saying "it would be the beginning of the Berlusconi era in Italy and it would mean dealing with the war of Iraq."
In November 2017, Guadagnino shared his intention to make a series of five films, where the audience could "see those actors grow older, embodying those characters." A month later, he was reported to have begun writing a script for a sequel, one that would reveal more about Oliver and resembles Michael Apted's Up series. Hammer and Chalamet have both expressed interest in participating in a sequel, while Ivory has no interest to the material, saying "that's fine, good. But I don't know how they're going to get a 40-year-old Timmy!". In January 2018, Guadagnino revealed the setting will be "right after the fall of Berlin Wall and that great shift that was the end of [...] the USSR," and what could be the first scene in the film, is where Elio watching Paul Vecchiali's Once More (1988), the first French film to deal with AIDS, in a movie theater.
References
External links
- Official website
- Call Me by Your Name on IMDb
- Call Me by Your Name at Rotten Tomatoes
- Call Me by Your Name at Metacritic
Source of article : Wikipedia
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