Call Me by Your Name (2017)
That closing scene. You know the one. A father sits with his son and says, without judgement, without awkwardness, exactly what any young person in pain needs to hear. It's one of the finest scenes I've watched in a very long time, and it alone would earn Call Me by Your Name a place in my memory. The trouble is, getting there takes nearly two and a half hours, and not every one of those hours pulls its weight.
Let me be clear about what Luca Guadagnino gets right, because he gets a lot right. The Italian summer feels genuinely lived-in. The heat radiates off the screen. Every peach, every bicycle ride, every half-heard piece of music feels chosen with care. This is a film that wants you to slow down and feel where you are, and for long stretches it works beautifully. Timothée Chalamet is remarkable throughout, carrying the film's emotional centre with a kind of raw, restless vulnerability that never tips into performance. You believe every confused glance, every bout of sulking, every moment of dawning understanding. He's extraordinary.
The supporting cast brings real warmth too. But here's where I have to be honest about my mixed feelings: the women in this story are frustratingly thin. They exist around the edges, present but never quite given room to breathe or matter, and for a film that positions itself as a deeply human portrait of connection, that's a noticeable gap. It's not a dealbreaker, but it nags.
The pacing is the other issue. Deliberate and atmospheric is one thing, and Guadagnino has every right to linger. But lingering occasionally tips into indulgence here, and the story underneath, a privileged teenager drifting through an idle summer until a romance reshapes him, doesn't quite have the structural muscle to justify every languid pause. The familiar beats arrive more or less when you expect them. That doesn't make them dishonest, but it does mean the film rarely surprises you, and surprise is one of the things that separates the very good from the genuinely great.
I kept thinking about Beautiful Boy, another film built around a young man in crisis and a father trying to reach him. That one struggles with pacing in its own ways too, but it earns its emotional moments differently. Here, everything builds toward that father-son conversation, and when it arrives, the film absolutely justifies itself. It's a piece of writing and performance that I'd describe as one of the most empathetic, genuinely moving things I've seen committed to screen. It doesn't condescend, it doesn't tie things up neatly, it simply offers understanding. And then the film ends on a long, held close-up that does more with silence than most films manage with entire third acts.
So where does that leave me? Call Me by Your Name is visually gorgeous, beautifully acted, and emotionally honest in its best moments. It's also overlong, structurally familiar, and somewhat lopsided in how it treats its characters. It doesn't reinvent anything. But that final stretch is something I won't forget in a hurry, and Chalamet's performance alone makes the journey worthwhile.
Three and a half stars. Watch it for the atmosphere, watch it for the performances, and stay for that monologue. Just go in knowing it's a very good film rather than the masterpiece some will tell you it is.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2026-06-04
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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