Call Me By Your Name

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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Where better to set a cinematic love poem than “somewhere in Northern Italy”? That general locale has sufficed for films ranging “Under the Tuscan Sun” to “Stealing Beauty,” from “Enchanted April” to “Malèna,” among a number of others.

Add “Call Me By Your Name” to the list.

Ignore gender and age, don’t worry about geographic specificity — simply allow the idea of Italy to represent a fairy tale setting in which to explore matters of the heart.

Director Luca Guadagnino (“I Am Love,” “A Bigger Splash”) explores a verdant landscape with “warm, sunny skies, gentle breezes and charming, tree-lined roads of northern Italy.” Peaches and apricots hang abundantly on the trees. It’s a garden of sensual delights.

Here we meet Professor Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his Italian wife Annella (Amira Casar) who spend summers in Italy with their 17-year-old son Elio (Timothée Chalamet). This is the summer of 1983, an idyllic interlude where there’s little to do but read, play piano, ponder classic art. And pursue hidden passions.

Being an expert on Greco-Roman culture, the professor requires a grad student to help him with research during these summer sojourns. Enter Oliver (Armie Hammer), an American youth who joins the Perlmans for the annual internship. “The usurper,” Elio calls him in the opening scene.

Now the players are in place.  Elio is a gangly bookworm, something of a prodigy (“Is there anything you don’t know?” Oliver asks the boy). In turn, Elio admires Oliver’s sophisticated style — his swagger, his American can-do attitude. Whether dismounting a bicycle, sipping a glass of apricot juice, or wading in a cold stream, Oliver is the embodiment of a handsome deity, not unlike those Olympians that Elio’s father studies.

Can Elio resist when Oliver gives him a note that says, “Grow up. See you at midnight.”

This is a love story, at least one that spans a brief moment in time, with Elio leaving childhood behind. “I don’t want either of us to pay for this,” Oliver says. 

Nor do we, the homoerotic theme transcending our own sexual penchants.

“Call Me By Your Name” is now showing at Tropic Cinema.

You’ll spend a fair amount of après-movie time debating whose performance was better, Timothée Chalamet’s or Armie Hammer’s.

“Call Me By Your Name” was adapted from André Aciman’s same-named book by James Ivory, the maestro who gave us “Room With a View” and “Maurice” (proving his mastery of Italian settings and same-sex romance).

This lush and vibrant masterpiece has been called “far and away the best movie of the year” by RogerEbert.com. Most critics include it on their Top Ten Films of 2017 list.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com