Allow me to take you on a little journey all the way back to 2018's Oscar season. There were tons of great films nominated for Best Picture that year -- "The Shape of Water," "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" (so freaking good), "Lady Bird," etc. -- but if you ask me, none were more beautifully done than "Call Me By Your Name." Luca Guadagnino's masterpiece of a film, based on André Aciman's novel of the same name, is positively life-changing.
If you haven't seen it, "Call Me By Your Name" tells the story of 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) who is spending the summer at his family's villa in northern Italy, as they do every year. And just like every summer, Elio's father, a professor, invites a doctoral student to live with them while interning for him. Enter Oliver (Armie Hammer), the most beautiful specimen of a man we ever did see. Set in 1983, the film combines the lazy, hazy days of an Italian summer with a touching friendship-turned-electric desire one can only hope to experience in their lifetime.
I won't spoil the entire plot for you, but let's just say it's hopeful and wonderful and heartbreaking all at the same time. And it's one of the most gorgeously-done films you'll ever see.
Plans for a second film based on the second half of "Call Me By Your Name" were announced back in late 2018, but since then, Aciman has published a sequel: "Find Me." With even more subject matter for Guadagnino to work with, fans of quasi-indie films like this one are about to get very lucky.
“Of course, it was a great pleasure to work with Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Esther Garrel and the other actors. Everyone will be in the new movie,” director Luca Guadagnino said in an interview earlier this month. The sequel will pick up 10 years after the original film left off, and there is no amount of heart-eye emojis that can describe how I feel about this news.
To celebrate, and to convince you to give the first film a watch if you haven't yet, let's take a little journey down memory lane into the perfection that is this movie.
