Call Me By Your Name Book Review

First love is one of those experiences that we never forget.

In Call Me By Your Name, by Andre Aciman, Elio is an American teenage boy whose parents own a villa in Italy in the 1980’s. They spend every summer and every holiday there. Elio’s father is a college professor who brings in a graduate student every summer to help him with his work. That particular summer, the graduate student is Oliver. What starts out as an ordinary summer will forever change both of their lives and spark a relationship that is never to be forgotten.

I saw the movie over the summer and was blown away. I was equally blown away by the book. The reader is in Elio’s head throughout the course of the narrative. What blew me away was that Elio’s story was not just about first love, but it was about first love that feels so different from other stories about first love. It felt natural, normal, intense and life changing. There might be some who object that the two lead characters are both male, but the way I see it, this story proves that love is love, regardless of the gender of the lovers.

I absolutely recommend it.

 

 

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Call Me By Your Name Movie Review

We never forget our first love, especially when we are young. No matter how old we get or who we fall in love with later in life, our first love always stays with us.

In the new film Call Me By Your Name, (based upon the book by Andre Aciman of the same name), 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) is spending the summer of 1983 at his family’s Italian chalet. His father, Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a professor of Greco-Roman history and takes on a graduate student as a research assistant every summer. His mother, Annella Perlman (Amira Casar) is a linguist. The graduate student who will be living with them and studying with Elio’s father that particular summer is a young man named Oliver (Armie Hammer).  Elio thinks he knows about love, but the summer and his relationship with Oliver will forever change his view of love.

What I absolutely loved about this movie was that it was about first love and how one is forever changed by that first love. While some might object to the film because the two romantic leads are men, I think that is exactly why this film must be seen. We live in a political and social climate where judgments are made about us based upon the labels we give ourselves and the labels others give us. If anything, this film teaches the audience that love is love is love. It doesn’t matter if the partners are heterosexual or homosexual.

I absolutely recommend it.

Call Me By Your Name is presently in theaters.