Call Me By Your Name

            As I’ve been catching up on some of the big name movies that are up for the Academy Awards, I wanted to take a moment to focus on a contender that has a lot to do with this month in particular. February means Valentine’s Day for a lot of people out there, so when seeking out a romantic escape from reality, you want to have the perfect movie to settle down into. And this year, the Academy Awards has some big forbidden love stories nominated this year; with a major one being the critically praised, Call Me By Your Name.

            Set in Northern Italy in the year 1983, an archeology professor invites an American graduate student named Oliver to come work as his assistant. While there, Oliver and the professor’s son, Elio, start to form a blooming relationship with a sort of “will they, won’t they” conflict to them.

            Currently, this film has been nominated for some heavy categories at the Oscars, including Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, and Lead Actor for Timothee Chalamet as Elio. A majority of the praise comes from just how the romance between Elio and Oliver develops throughout the film, despite the age difference between them. And many say that this feels like a truly revolutionary coming-of-age love story about sexual discovery.

However, upon further observation, Call Me By Your Name not only doesn’t live up to the kind of impact Moonlight left on me, this movie doesn’t even deserve to call itself Oscar worthy. I know I’m going to piss almost everyone off when I say this, but Call Me By Your Name to me, ended up as just being this year’s “Oscar Gay Movie.” It was what people addressed Moonlight and Brokeback Mountain as, and it’s what this movie is, only it just degrades itself into the clichéd boring art house melodrama that nobody gives a shit about. Disregarding the fact that these two were different age ranges and two guys, there’s nothing that interesting I found about either Elio or Oliver. And I don’t think part of that’s to blame on the script, as James Ivory is a brilliant writer, with his adaptation of Howard’s End being a shining example of his work; I just feel like the film’s editing and pacing make the story feel padded out heavily. Sure, the cinematography is beautiful, but there are so many tracking shots that make the film feel like an eternity to get to; you could have edited this down by forty minutes, and it would have been easier to sit through.

            As for the performances, the only actor I didn’t like in this was Timothee Chalamet; granted, I liked him in Lady Bird as the poetic douche boyfriend, but he’s so lifeless in this. He just looks so bored to be there, like he doesn’t even realize that he’s supposed to be in character. Whenever I see him with Armie Hammer or Michael Stuhlberg, you can clearly see that they’re on a completely different level than him. I don’t exactly know if that was how he was directed, but something was clearly off here. Maybe if they had gotten someone like Dylan Minnette, Logan Lerman, or Darce Montgomery, they might have brought something to this character that was supposed to be there.

            I’m sure there are people out there praising the movie as one of the most heartfelt stories they’ve seen, and more power to you if you believe that. I tried to like this, but I can’t see this as anything other than the same Oscar bait love story we’ve seen before; just because it’s with a man and boy, doesn’t change how pretentious it is. It’s not among the worst films I’ve seen this year, but it is still one of the worst Best Picture nominated films I’ve seen in a while.

Rating: D+