The Perlmans own a villa outside of Moscazzano in Northern Italy, where they spend their summers and Hannukah. They invite a graduate student to spend six weeks with them over the summer to help Professor Perlman with his work. This summer – 1983 – the student in question is an American named Oliver. While there, Oliver largely associates with the Perlmans’ seventeen year old son Elio and Elio’s friends, the females among the group whose hearts are aflutter by Oliver’s preppy good looks. Oliver, in fact, takes up casually with one of them, Chiara.
Elio is an intellectual, but has no experience with girls as he is only now experimenting with his initial stage of manhood and masculinity. If not for Oliver, Elio probably would have chosen Chiara himself, and as such takes up with Marzia instead. Despite their social association and sleeping in adjoining rooms in the villa, Elio doesn’t much like Oliver in thinking him too cocky and arrogant partly in that brash American sensibility. In turn, Oliver believes Elio is patronizing in his outward dislike of him.
These outward behaviors mask the fact that there is a deep attraction between Elio and Oliver based largely on their admiration of the other’s intellect. When they eventually admit that attraction late into Oliver’s stay, Oliver is more reticent to act on those feelings in not wanting to ruin his own or Elio’s life in still being in the closet, while Elio wants to experience all that sex and love are as he is in the flush of first real love.
With Oliver and Elio’s clandestine relationship, Elio has to figure out what to do about Marzia, he who may be aware or unaware of her own very deep feelings for him in also experiencing that flush of first love. The other question then becomes if Elio will be able to recover as there will definitely be an end at least to this phase of Oliver and Elio’s romance when Oliver leaves to go home at the end of the summer.
Call Me by Your Name is a 2017 romantic coming-of-age drama film directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by James Ivory, based on the 2007 novel of the same name by André Aciman. It is the third and final installment in Guadagnino’s thematic Desire trilogy, following I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015). Set in Northern Italy in 1983, Call Me by Your Name chronicles the romantic relationship between Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a 17-year-old living in Italy, and his father’s American assistant, Oliver (Armie Hammer). The film also stars Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, and Victoire Du Bois.
Call Me by Your Name had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2017. Prior to its premiere, Sony Pictures Classics acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film for $6 million. The deal was negotiated by WME Global and UTA Independent Film Group. International distribution rights were purchased by Memento Films International, a French company, which showed the promo reel for the film at the American Film Market in November 2016. It was also screened at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 13, 2017, the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2017, and the New York Film Festival on October 3, 2017.
Call Me by Your Name began a limited release in the United Kingdom on October 27, 2017, and in the United States on November 24, 2017. It expanded from four to thirty locations in the United States on December 15, 2017, and then to 114 theaters on December 22. It hit 174 theaters on January 12, 2018, before going into wide release, just days before the Oscar nomination announcement ceremony, on January 19, 2018, reaching 815 theaters. The film was opened in Italy on January 25; special screenings will be take place in Crema on January 27 and 29.
As of January 24, 2018, Call Me by Your Name has grossed $9.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $4.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $13.4 million, against a production budget of $3.5 million. The film is Sony Pictures Classics third-highest grossing 2017 release.
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Call Me by Your Name (2017)
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, Victoire Du Bois, Vanda Capriolo, Antonio Rimoldi, Marco Sgrosso, André Aciman, Elena Bucci, Peter Spears
Screenplay by: James Ivory
Production Design by: Samuel Deshors
Cinematography by: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Film Editing by: Walter Fasano
Costume Design by: Giulia Piersanti
Set Decoration by: Muriel Chinal, Sandro Piccarozzi, Violante Visconti di Modrone
Art Direction by: Roberta Federico
Makeup Department: Fernanda Perez
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, nudity and some language.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: November 24, 2017
