Call Me by Your Name (2017) Review: First Love, Fully Felt

Is Call Me by Your Name worth watching?

Yes. Call Me by Your Name is a ravishing, emotionally precise film about first love, and Timothée Chalamet’s performance makes every flicker of longing feel real. Luca Guadagnino captures the texture of one Italian summer so completely that the film seems to breathe. The reservation is pace: the first hour is deliberately languid, and viewers who want a story that moves briskly may find its patience trying before it pays off.

What is Call Me by Your Name about?

Call Me by Your Name is set in the summer of 1983 at a family villa in northern Italy. Seventeen-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) spends his days reading, transcribing music and drifting between swimming and bike rides, until his father, an archaeology professor played by Michael Stuhlbarg, welcomes Oliver (Armie Hammer), an American graduate student who has come to assist him for the summer.

At first Elio finds Oliver’s confidence irritating. Over the following weeks, that irritation turns into fascination and then desire, and the film follows the two as they circle each other, uncertain what the other wants.

Guadagnino directed from James Ivory’s screenplay, adapted from André Aciman’s novel; Ivory won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. It is an Italian-led co-production, spoken mostly in English with Italian and French woven through, and it runs 132 minutes. The film premiered at Sundance in 2017.

Chalamet makes adolescence visible

This is the performance that made Chalamet a star, and it is easy to see why. He plays Elio as clever, a little arrogant and utterly unguarded, a teenager who can talk about Bach and literature with adults but has no idea how to handle what he feels. Much of the role is played without dialogue: the way he watches Oliver across a table, the way he fidgets, sulks and then brightens. It is a remarkably physical piece of acting, all restless limbs and sudden stillness.

Hammer gives Oliver an easy, all-American ease that hides a surprising reticence, and Michael Stuhlbarg, as Elio’s father, is quietly superb. He plays a parent who notices far more than he says, and the film’s warmth owes a great deal to his gentle presence in the background of scenes.

Guadagnino’s summer you can almost touch

The film’s sensuality goes well beyond its romance. Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom fill the frame with orchards, stone courtyards, cool rivers and long, lazy lunches, shot in soft natural light that makes the heat almost tangible. The camera tends to stay at a respectful distance, letting scenes play out in long takes, which gives the romance room to develop at its own nervous pace.

Music matters, too. Sufjan Stevens’s original songs sit alongside period pop and classical piano, and their mix of nostalgia and ache matches the film’s sense of a moment being lived and remembered at the same time.

A romance built for patience

The unhurried pace is both the film’s gift and its main demand. The early stretch lingers on routine and flirtation for so long that some viewers will wonder where it is heading, and Oliver remains more of an idea than a fully drawn character, seen almost entirely through Elio’s eyes. The age gap between the two characters is also something some viewers will find uncomfortable, even though the film treats the relationship with care.

Who should watch Call Me by Your Name?

It suits viewers who love slow, atmospheric romance, coming-of-age stories and films that treat feeling as the main event. Give it two uninterrupted hours and a patient frame of mind. It contains sexual content and brief nudity, making it suitable for older teens and adults.

For more in this vein:

• Challengers, Guadagnino’s much sharper, faster story of desire and rivalry.
• Queer, his later, more melancholy study of longing that goes unanswered.
• Cinema Paradiso, another Italian film steeped in memory, youth and the feelings a single place can hold.

The verdict

Call Me by Your Name is a gorgeous, heartfelt film that understands the intensity of first love better than almost any other modern romance. Its slow start and thinly drawn object of desire keep it just shy of perfect, but Chalamet’s performance and Guadagnino’s sensual craft make it essential.

Rating: 4.5/5