By: Jessica Goddard

Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name is a complex and highly nuanced coming-of-age story, packed with moving performances.

Set in a gorgeous part of Italy in the summer of 1983, precocious teenager Elio (Timothée Chalamet) meets Oliver (Armie Hammer), the likeable but noticeably older scholarly assistant come to help out Elio’s professor father.  The rollercoaster of sexual tension between them is all at once thrilling, poignant, and uncomfortable.  The relationship is treated with such careful sensitivity that it’s hard to earnestly object to the potentially objectionable subject matter, and this film is smart enough to opt out of making statements regarding these ethics.  While the film could be edited down from the two-hour-and-twelve-minute runtime, the script’s energy and insight make up for the moments when the film drags.

Call Me By Your Name is an unavoidably beautiful and touching drama, even where it should feel contentious.

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Call Me By Your Name screens at TIFF on: 

Thursday, September 7 at 9:45 a.m. @ Scotiabank Theatre (press and industry)
Thursday, September 7 at 7:15 p.m. @ Ryerson
Friday, September 8 at 9:30 a.m. @ TIFF Bell Lightbox

Rating: 18A
Language: English, Italian, French, German
Runtime: 132 minutes

For more information on the festival, visit the official TIFF webpage here.

Buy tickets here.

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