Call Me by Your Name: Perspectives on the Film

Adapted by James Ivory from André Aciman’s novel and directed by Luca Guadagnino, the film Call Me by Your Name has been passionately received among audiences and critics ever since its 2017 release. A love story between seventeen-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer) and set in 1983 ‘Somewhere in northern Italy’, Call Me by Your Name presents a gay relationship in a romantic idyll seemingly untroubled by outside pressures, prejudices or tragedy. While this means it offers audiences welcome opportunities to swoon in front of an LGBTQ+ romance that equals classic heterosexual romances onscreen, its relevance or political significance today may not be immediately apparent. And yet the film is abundantly infused with narrative, thematic and stylistic elements that can be interpreted as speaking powerfully to contemporary audiences on questions of sexual identity. This edited collection addresses how the film helps inform our understanding of contemporary sexual identity and romance. How does this love story explore wider tensions that exist between the specific and the general, between the open and the hidden, and between the past and the present? The contributors to the collection explore these questions in stimulating and contemplative manners.