CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (2017)

Rated:  R


STARS: Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Esther Garrel
DIRECTOR: Luca Guadagnino
GENRE: Drama/Romance

Northern Italy. Music...wine and...sex!  I'm on board!

Elio (Timothee Chalamet) is a precocious 17 year-old music prodigy, staying with his parents for the summer at their posh Italian villa. He kinda likes a local girl, Marzia (Esther Garrel), and they end up having some naked fun together. But then a bit older American scholar working on his doctorate arrives to intern with Elio's father, the archaeology professor (Michael Stuhlbarg). At first, Elio is somewhat passively/aggressive hostile toward Oliver (Armie Hammer). But as they spend time together, biking around and playfully feeling each other out (no, what you're thinking of comes later), a mutual attraction develops. It's pretty clear the door to Elio's heart swings both ways. Over the course of the summer, Elio discovers that he has indeed found his first love. 

Call Me By Your Name is a beautiful film on many levels. The cinematography, the achingly poignant music score, but most of all the expressiveness and depth of emotion that young Timothee Chalamet is capable of displaying. (He's earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.) There is "one of those scenes" near the end--a conversation between Elio and his father--that I think is destined to be shown in college acting classes as a way of inspiring students to be all that they can be.  

There is nothing terribly graphic in Call Me By Your Name, other than some female breasts (go figure), though the make-out scenes between Chalamet and Armie Hammer--two purportedly straight actors?-- are extremely convincing, and I could have done with fewer of them. There is one scene with a juicy peach that you will either find cringe-worthy or hilarious, depending on how much you liked the warm apple pie bit from American Pie!  

Grade:  A -

JILL'S TAKE

I found it interesting that not one male—gay or straight—was in the audience when I went to see this painfully long, painfully self indulgent film. I realize director Luca Guadagnino is trying to be sensitive about a somewhat touchy (and I don't mean touchy-feely) subject. But the lengths he goes to not offend any possible homophobes—who wouldn't be caught dead seeing this film—seems like overkill. The developing 'friendship' between the 24 year-old student and his mentor's 17-year-old son takes forever. (In reel time, at least an hour and a half in a movie that last for two hours and twelve minutes!)

If I had to say something positive about this languid love story it would be to praise the score which almost feels like an actual character in the movie. Interestingly enough, no scorer is listed in the credits. Just a music consultant, a music coordinator and a music supervisor. Hmmmm...

I wish I had liked Call Me By Your Name more.(That title makes absolutely no sense, by the way.) But to sound perfectly cynical, I think the only reason it got a Best Picture nod from The Academy was to be 'politically correct.' (Who wants the gay community picketing outside the Kodak Theater on March 4^th?) Not to take away from the Best Actor nomination Timothée Chalamat received which he richly deserves. Still, it ain't no Brokeback Mountain.

Grade:  C

THE AMERICAN (rated R)

Stars: George Clooney, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli, Violante Placido, Johan Leysen

Director: Anton Corbijn

Genre: Thriller

Not your normal Hollywood fare, The American grabs hold of you with one of the most startling opening scenes you're ever likely to see. And then the movie becomes brooding and introspective, but we've been put on notice of the kind of thing that can--and will be expected--to happen again. We're just waiting to see who, how, what, when and where.

George Clooney is Jack, a hired assassin. We don't know who he's working for, other than the weathered dude (Johan Leysen) who gives him instructions over the phone. Other assassins are after him, trying to knock him off before he can knock them off--kinda like the old Mad Magazine's Spy Vs Spy. We don't know who they're working for either...CIA? KGB? Or just some murderous SOB? This uncertainty has the effect of bringing all events into the immediacy of the NOW--which is where, ideally, life should be lived anyway. Every small thing that happens is magnified in significance, and with all those shadowy folks out gunning for him, Jack is naturally a little paranoid. So just sitting down for a cup of coffee with someone has him second guessing himself--as well as the person he's with--his finger constantly poised upon the trigger.

After the opening incident, which occurs in the snowy white Swedish countryside, Jack is instructed to hole up in a small Italian village. There, he is to deliver a custom made weapon to a mysterious female hit woman named Mathilde (Thekla Reuten). We don't know who she'll be targeting, but it's going to make a big splash in the newspapers.

Jack is befriended by a local priest, Father Benedetto, (Paolo Bonacelli) who senses that the American is up to something, and talks to him about sin. But the hired gunman is a cold, hard customer...until he gets involved with a beautiful prostitute named Clara, (Violante Placido) who wants to have more than a business relationship with him. (After all--it IS George Clooney!) Jack discovers that his conscience--deeply buried--is still alive in there somewhere, and decides he wants to get out of the killing game and start a normal life with Clara. BUT--with the kind of karma he has incurred for himself, will it be too late?

The American has a traditional plot, but refreshingly so. You don't need a scorecard to follow it, like a lot of thrillers these days (Inception, for example) that leave you scratching your head, wondering if they made it so complicated because they wanted you to come back and pony up your money a second or third time, just to try to figure it out.

The scenery is pleasant to the eye--not the least of which is the oft-naked Violante Placido as Jack's love interest.

If you're the type of moviegoer who needs to have everything spelled out at the end with a neat little bow on top, you'll be displeased. But if you can take the larger view and grasp that The American is about "sin" on a universal scale--and that all those tidy little details would be superfluous, I think you'll come away satisfied.

And if you're the ruthless sort yourself--not an assassin, but a business person, let's say--who tries to screw your customers by running TV commercials with a lot of unreadable fine print at the bottom of the screen that contradicts everything that's coming out of your mouth--you may find yourself reassessing your skulduggery, and developing perhaps a tiny speck of conscience, after viewing this film.

GRADE: B+