A sun-drenched symphony of first love, CALL ME BY YOUR NAME is Luca Guadagnino's melancholy love letter to longing, identity, and the ephemeral nature of connection. Set in the verdant landscape of Northern Italy circa 1983, the film chronicles the electrical tensions between a precocious 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and his father's magnetically charismatic American research assistant, Oliver (Armie Hammer), over the course of one life-changing summer.
What begins as gently flirtatious in nature, ripens into a fully fleshed out romance (ripe peaches and all) imbued with fragrant sensuality, blistering emotional acuity, and a humbling awareness of time's passage. With a star-making turn from Chalamet, an immediately-indelible Sufjan Stevens soundtrack, and directing that somehow mimics the quality of a tad-too-lingering memory, this queer coming-of-age story is about as much about who we desire as it is about who we become.
Deservedly-called a modern classic, CALL ME BY YOUR NAME secured its spot in the pantheon of LGBTQ cinema, and now it joins our QUEER AS CULT series, where its emotional restraint, measured intonations, and beautifully-pained poetry fit right at home amongst some of our favorite melodramaniacs and misfits.