Call Me by Your Name

Director Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash) dials down some of his stylistic excesses for this sun-kissed coming-of-age drama set in the Italian countryside. James Ivory adapted the André Aciman book, and the combination of chilly repression and warming desire in Call Me by Your Name make it feel like an heir to Ivory’s A Room with a View. Timothée Chalamet gives a potentially star-making lead performance as Elio, an intellectually precocious but sexually inexperienced 17-year-old nursing a crush on his father’s new research assistant, an enigmatic hunk in white crew socks and shorts named Oliver (Armie Hammer). While Elio fumbles through an awkward relationship with a female peer, his encounters with Oliver grow increasingly flirtatious, finally becoming sexual as the summer speeds toward an end. Michael Stuhlbarg gives a strong supporting performance as Elio’s compassionate father and Hammer is very well-cast, but Chalamet owns the film with his passionate ambiguity.