"Call Me By Your Name" film review: Bland and meaningless

Luca Guadagnino is a short-sighted conformist who has no concept of risk-taking and is ignorant to unconventional realities.

Call Me By Your Name is a film adaptation of Andre Aciman's 2007 novel, directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Armie Hammer as Oliver and Timothee Chalamet as Elio.

In a book review of the novel, Elio was characterized as a 17-year old intellectual, and Oliver a "sociable scholar." It tells the story of a "discreet" Jewish family who invites academics into their home in a span of six weeks to do scholarly work. Next in line for the summer residency program is 24-year-old Oliver, who later on catches the attention of Elio and romance buds between them.

In the first quarter of the film, problems submerge. The novel was written in first person perspective, hence easily weaving the depth of Elio's knowledge and his erratic emotions. The character was playful at times, and interestingly able to level himself with the older men in the house. However if the viewer would carefully observe, what's missing was the characterization. Much-needed monologues were absent, and the characters of Timothee and Armie felt premature.

Guadagnino seemed confused as to how the romance between the two will develop. He lost sight as to whose perspective he is going to focus on,  thus disregarding what opportunity for viewer arousal could have been in the first few minutes of the film. Perspectives — as it always was — is an effective tool to bring the audiences closer to empathizing with the characters. At one point, there is a lost intimacy with how Oliver interacts with Elio — such that it does not touch upon the semantics of the novel which helped in developing what they feel for each other.

From how Elio looked and thought of him as he arrived and to the relevance of his Jewish faith, the audience should have been given a chance to peek inside Elio to better appreciate what made Call Me By Your Name a coming-of-age drama. For the most part of the film's first half, the pacing was too fast to even bother inspecting what with Oliver's Later! remarks were bothering Elio. Guadagnino's adaptation was devoid of thinking and monologues, as was made apparent in his statement "I personally dislike the idea of voiceover – having your main character telling the story retrospectively – because in a way, it kills the surprise." Thus, viewers are left with imagery and details that do not galvanize them as they proceed with the story. Narrations do not have to be a an explanation of what is then and what is to be anticipated.

Of all the themes in the book, Guadagnino is compressing everything without a focal point to build up emotion, and diminishing what emotion could have been communicated bit by bit to the audience as he places sudden bursts of emotion in only several scenes throughout the film. The characters, for the most part, felt disconnected. Only the plot progressed but not their motivations – what links them to each other.

Another point to be raised is how supporting characters have more lines than the protagonists and their dialogue is not carrying the weight of the absence of interaction, action and reaction between Oliver and Elio.

A lifesaver was when the plot arrives to the time when Oliver finally makes his motives obvious to Elio, along with the well-directed and efficiently performed intimate scenes at the middle of the film. There is good chemistry between the actors, and more than half of the film was at least faithful to the book, along with the cinematography in the most important scenes.

In a scene when midnight came and Oliver and Elio are in the bedroom, sexual consciousness merely became a snippet of romantic thrills. The relevance of Oliver's smoking should not have been rearranged to the early part of the film. As The Writer watched, he noted "Oliver did not ravage him like that!" as it was written in the novel.

The Peach scene was also edited, transforming into a swift intertextual device to arouse the audience in the film's third quarter, having none of the semiotic value of the act. In an interview with Vulture, Guadagnino said "I didn’t want something that could be exploitative, sensationalist, or even involuntarily ridiculous..."

All in all, the perfect soundtrack can not compensate for the shallow, impervious, obdurate, abortive, and tactless direction that has inexorably lacked in meaningful transitions and tone that was plain rottenly common for a layman and a failed attempt at improvements over cliches.

Call Me By Your Name was watered down to cater to — and for commercial interests — heterosexual audiences, a fine example of internalized homophobia.

©The Pink Merman