This film is remarkable for its simplicity. Director Luca Guadagnino allows a summer romance to play out as a beautiful, tender revelation of the senses, between two young men. Based on the 2007 novel by André Aciman, the the emerging attraction between 17 year old Elio Perlman, (Timothée Chalamet – Lady Bird) and 24 year old Oliver (Armie Hammer).
The scene is 1983 in Northern Italy where Elio spends the summer at his parents idyllic villa playing and transcribing Classical Music, reading and flirting with his best friend Marzia (Esther Garrel). Elio’s father (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a professor of Greco-Roman antiquities, his mother, Annella (Amira Casar) is a translator. They are the parents everyone wishes to have; loving, supportive and always ready to lend an ear.
Oliver appears on the scene as the professor’s American grad-student summer intern. Not only attractive, Oliver challenges Elio to begin exploring his attitudes and emotions. Oliver sees himself as an outsider. He grew up as the only Jew in a small New England town and wears a Jewish star. Elio now feels it’s time to acknowledge his own Jewish heritage and suddenly starts wearing his own Star of David. At first, they are like ships passing in the night, almost avoiding confrontation. But there’s something there.
21 year old Timothée Chalamet’s performance is stunning and brave. On the one hand he plays an insolent 17 year old with the mind and knowledge of someone vastly older, yet emotionally and sexually, he is exactly his age. He inhabits those two worlds and with few words yet we can feel his desire and yearning. His young hormones are raging.
Slowly, tension builds, attraction develops and a bond grows between them. This is allowed to take place without the kind of pressure and danger that’s normally layered into gay love stories like last years Moonlightor in 2005’s Brokeback Mountain. Hammer is independent, sure of himself and totally uninhibited as evidenced in his free form dancing in front of the whole village grabbing Elio’s full attention. (Hammer freely admits he’s not a dancer but an imposing figure at 6’5″ on a dance floor.) As Oliver, Hammer takes on the role of teaching Elio a thing or two. He’s brash and challenging, then sensitive and loving.
Guadagnino lets the relationship slowly grow and ripen like the beautiful fruits and vegetables in Northern Italy that are always within arm’s reach. The landscape, forests and rivers are impossibly beautiful. Every meal eaten at the table under the trees is like a postcard. And they are always consuming something, from food, to books, to the Italian hillside, to each other.
Each swim in the river, like every moment of that summer, is meant to be devoured and enjoyed. Without giving too much away, look for a peach to play a startling role in this intimate love story.
The sex between Elio and Oliver is not about conquest, but rather tenderness. The only hint that their love is something to keep hidden is when Oliver and Elio have to stifle expressing affection in public.
The moment this film really grabs your heart is a scene between Elio and his father when the summer romance inevitably ends and the boy is trying to make sense of his feelings. Michael Stuhlbarg delivers warmth, wisdom and non-judgmental understanding that generations of gay men have been waiting to hear, but have never received.
Guardagnino, who himself lives with his partner in the same region, is happy to let this message of acceptance be the over riding theme. It is the third film of Guadagnino’s Desire trilogy, following I Am Love(2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015).
This film is a beautifully shot lavish love letter to Italy, but even more, the slow unfolding of a love affair that meant something to two men who knew it would not continue. But they learn more about themselves having had this love. The long closeup of Elio at the end of the film is more memorable and revealing than any dialogue. In that one shot we see Elio move through all his emotions and come to resolution. It was a satisfying conclusion to a film that wraps you in a warm embrace.
Sony 2 hours 12 minutes R
