Review of Call Me by Your Name (2017) by David W — 03 Feb 2018

I was excited for this movie. I love a good romance and I really, really liked the book. The trailer was outstanding and the reviews promised an almost transcendental experience. I went into the theater after enjoying a fantastic meal and a nice glass of wine, completely ready to to fall in love. I was very disappointed.

The movie moved at a snail's pace. It wasn't just a slow burn--it was like watching someone trying to light wet cardboard. I never felt the tension building between the two main characters. I simply didn't buy Elio and Oliver falling in love, which rendered the first quarter of the movie useless. Because I didn't buy their budding feelings, I wasn't excited when they actually did actually get together, and so I wasn't phased when the relationship failed. Because I never felt invested in the main relationship, there was just nothing for me to care about.

Chalamet acted his ass off--I bought him completely. Honestly, I put a lot of the blame Hammer--his performance was stiff, wooden, inauthentic, and, in some scenes, downright creepy. To be clear, I wasn't bothered by the age gap between the two main characters (Though, to be fair, Hammer is CLEARLY a 30-something-year-old pretending to be in his twenties, and Chalamet looked unsettlingly young by comparison) or the fact that it was a gay relationship, or anything like that. Hammer was just so cold--I never got the sense that he really cared about poor Elio one way or another. In quite a few scenes, Oliver came off as though he understood the depths of Elio's emotions and had simply decided to manipulate those emotions for his own physical gratification.

The movie screwed up the nosebleed scene, which was my favorite scene in the book. It started out great: I loved the jabbering Italian couple, and the frantic swinging of the camera, and all the smoke--it was very hectic and fun, but how do you NOT include a single shot of Oliver rubbing Elio's feet under the table, movie? What caused the nosebleed then??? To anyone who didn't read the book, it must have looked like Elio randomly got a nosebleed, and Oliver decided to take credit for it because Oliver is a big old narcissist.

And I'm going to say it--the ending credit scene was ridiculous. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to leave or what, and so I was tricked into watching a character do nothing but weep into the camera for like, a solid five minutes. Why? What the hell was the point?

Also, I didn't like the soundtrack. I actually found it distracting in quite a few scenes because it didn't fit the tone of what was going on.

Visually, the movie was breathtaking, and the dad was a pretty cool guy--his speech towards the end was bomb, probably the best part of the movie. I just wish these aspects were in a better film.

Overall, I thought this movie was vastly overrated. I really, REALLY wanted to like it, too.