In Northern Italy in 1983, seventeen year-old Elio begins a relationship with visiting Oliver, his father's research assistant, with whom he bonds over his emerging sexuality, their Jewish heritage, and the beguiling Italian landscape.
It is incredibly pleasant to spend a couple of hours with characters as unashamedly smart as this. It is rare these days to find English-speaking characters who revel in the pleasures of intellectual discussion, who celebrate each other's braininess.
"Call Me by Your Name" is enough to make you move to the town of Crema, even if your rational self realizes the director Luca Guadagnino trades in a heightened, miragelike state of mythic yearning.
"Call Me By Your Name" is transcendent in its first hour, communicating much through the camera's evocation of nature and the screenplay's clear yet subtle dialogue.
It's a rare movie that knows when to move and when to stay still. Call Me By Your Name ... is just such a film, lazy as a late-afternoon dragonfly one moment, rash and rushed as young love the next.
By the end of this 132-minute journey, I had grown somewhat weary of the tug of war between the two leads, despite disarming efforts from Hammer and Chalamet.