REVIEW: Smouldering sexual awakenings in sensual coming-of-age drama, Call Me By Your Name

REVIEW: Call Me By Your Name is an exquisitely crafted slow tease with strong performances, spectacular scenery and a sense of cinematic seduction.

BY the time the credits roll on this languorous tale of a young man’s sexual awakening, you’ll never be able to look at a peach in the same way again.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash) from a screenplay by James Ivory (The Remains Of the Day), Call Me By Your Name is nothing short of a cinematic seduction.

These seasoned filmmakers understand of the power of a slow tease.

And the lush, fertile backdrop of Northern Italy’s Lombardy region is a spontaneous collaborator. Plump stone fruit, natural water holes and ancient shaded alleyways all play their part.

It’s an idyllic environment in which to lose one’s virginity — in the case of our protagonist, to two different people in the same day.

Elio Perlman (Timothee Chalamet) is a precocious 17-year-old fluent in at least three languages as well as musical composition, modern literature and European history.

But there are some things, he informs his father’s intern Oliver (Armie Hammer) in a very loaded manner, that he knows almost nothing about.

Privileged, self-absorbed and a little bit arrogant, Elio might have come across as a bit of a prat were it not for his flickering, on-the-edge-of-adulthood beauty, which helps to mitigate some of his more thoughtless actions.

Armie Hammer and Timothee Chalamet in a scene from Call Me By Your Name.

His emotional vulnerability in the face of his desire makes him universally accessible.

Oliver is the catalyst for Elio’s transformation.

A few years older, the handsome American graduate student has come to spend the summer of 1983 with the Perlman family at their handsome rural villa.

The attraction between the two young men is instant, but it takes some considerable time for them to act upon it.

Elio’s dad (Michael Stuhlbarg), a professor of archaeology who specialises in Greek and Roman sculpture, is unusually liberal in his views on homosexuality.

Towards the end of the film he alludes to his own flirtations with other men in a speech that might cause viewers to question the authenticity of his own marriage, were it not for the exceptionally happy way in which the relationship with his wife is portrayed in this film.

While Elio’s parents aren’t troubled by their son’s sexual attraction to another man, there’s a lingering sense of transgression or danger to their courtship.

But in the end, it’s another character who gets hurt most.

Call Me By Your Name opens on Boxing Day. Sneak previews at selected cinemas this weekend.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (M)

Three and a half stars

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg

Verdict: Exquisite coming-of-age drama

Originally published as REVIEW: Smouldering sexual awakenings in sensual coming-of-age drama, Call Me By Your Name