I'm still on my admittedly late to the game post-Oscars/funemployment movie viewing jag. I've gone through
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) (all hail Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell) and
Coco (2017) (cried like a little nino), but the movie I want to write about today is the much-buzzed-aboot
Call Me by Your Name (2017).
I love to talk about adaptations. Nothing sets me off on a tear faster than the comment, "I liked the book better." It's like comparing elephants and whales. They're both awesome mammals- but you can't just throw a humpback whale on the Serengeti and expect it to face off with Jumbo. The mediums of literature and film while connected, are separate, unique experiences, and with the reader's active imagination in play, books very often come out on the winning end of this needless entertainment cagematch. All the same, it's interesting to see what screen adapters do to a book to make it ready for the multiplex.
In the case of CMBYN, I was informed I would love the book.
I didn't.
Don't get me wrong. I'm as geeked to read a gay love story as any other card-carrying homosexual- but Andre Aciman's novel about the sexual awakening of a seventeen-year-old in his family's Italian vacation villa left me wanting to give young Elio a cold shower. One minute Elio's love for visiting grad student Oliver is erotically absolute. The next he claims he couldn't care less if he never saw his handsome face or inhaled his swimtrunks again. It's terrifyingly accurate. It was like reading some of my diary entires from that adolescent age where everything was
immensely important and I loved and then hated people at the drop of a hormone. On the one hand, I was impressed by the emotions Aciman captured but on the other, mortified by the immaturity of the badminton game that is a teenager's romantic inner life.
The book was so mired in Elio's conflicted inner monologue, I was curious how Oscar-winner James Ivory would pull-off an adaptation that wouldn't have me shouting, "It gets better, Elio!" at the screen. Ivory and director Luca Guadagnino are successful at making Elio more palatable, but in the process sand away the sharp edges of first love.
Guadagnino made a splash in the indie movie scene with his Tilda Swinton starrer
I Am Love (2009). His handling of that tale of a life-altering love affair in Milan made him the perfect candidate for CMBYN. Guadagnino instinctively understands Italy and shoots the countryside as if it is both fresh and ancient at the same time. His camera frequently moves from the manmade to the naturemade, leaving that feeling of permanent impermanence. Time moves in a languid way, making us feel like, "There's always next Summer." And it is that casual quality that short-circuits the tortured passion of Aciman's novel.
Where Aciman's highly passionate text builds Elio's desires to unendurable levels, Guadagnino's camera pulls back. He often shoots the two lovers from a distance, denying us the feeling of intimacy and desire that the traditional closeup can evoke.
I expected some sort of visual exploration of the body that is the focus of Elio's desire, but even his first peek of Oliver's tushy is shot from across the room. I get that part of this camera strategy is to emphasize the distance between these two future lovers, but there were times it felt like Guadagnino's camera was a blasé observer rather than a titillated participant.
There is a laid back, "whatever happens" pace to the romance that belies the fiery passions that made the book enervating beyond the point of comfort. "Will it be bike-riding, swimming, or fucking this afternoon, old chap?"
Sometimes they choose swimming.
A perfect example of what I'm talking about is the infamous peach scene. In the book, after Elio date rapes a peach, his lover proves his passion for him by eating it. Now maybe the filmmakers thought putting something as graphic as eating a jizz-filled stone fruit on the screen would earn them the dreaded NC-17, but I think it could have been figured out (even though I would have had to cover my eyes). What we are left with is a peach-dodge and tears. Crying at various points in the film succeeds in elevating this special relationship, but it can't replace the primal passion that should be paired with it.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the touching monologue given by Elio's father (the delightfully versatile Michael Stuhlbarg.) It is a beautiful parental acceptance of a child. Add it to Mahershala Ali's speech in
Moonlight (2016) as evidence that Hollywood is finally portraying kinder Father-Gay Son relationships.
So if I'm being forced to choose between the book and the movie- I go with the movie- but mainly cause you can't see Armie Hammer's butt in the book.
