CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Review — Creepy, Not Cool
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Review
by Lisa Johnson Mandell
Amidst all the rapturous kudos and awards nominations poured out upon the popular indie film Call Me By Your Name, including eight nominations for Critics Choice Awards from my own group, the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA), doesn’t it bother anyone that it’s a film about an adult having an affair with a minor? In many places, including the U.S., that’s called statutory rape, and people have lost their jobs and reputations for a lot less recently.
Call Me By Your Name is the story of Oliver, a 24-year-old graduate student (a miscast Armie Hammer, who is 31 and looks every day of it) having an affair with Elio, (Timothée Chalamet) the precocious yet confused 17-year-old son of Oliver’s professor. If this were to happen today in real life, Oliver would be thrown out of his graduate program and banned from academia for all time.
You’d think that given the current cultural climate. this particular theme would be reviled, rather than embraced. Even though it’s a consensual affair and the word “love” is bandied about, am I alone in finding it creepy?
We should overlook the ickiness of a powerful adult indulging in a relationship with an inexperienced kid, perhaps because 1984 was a more innocent time? Because it’s a same sex relationship, and it’s politically incorrect to scrutinize that? Because it takes place in Italy, where statutory rape is not a thing? Maybe since there are only supposed to be seven years between Elio and Oliver, it’s okay?
Or perhaps it’s because Hammer and Chalamet are beautiful. I doubt the film would have even been released if Oliver was played by an overweight actor with a neck beard, or if the part of Elio had been written for a vulnerable teenage girl. Should gender and/or beauty excuse all?
Yes, the performances are superb, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s cinematography is stunning, and Luca Guadagnino’s direction is tender, if a bit languid at times.
But I find it strangely hypocritical that Hollywood is so willing to celebrate the behavior on film that it so vehemently condemns in real life. What I’d really like to see is the sequel, 30 years later, when Elio expands the #MeToo movement to the ivory towers of academia (where sexual abuse and discrimination have been rampant for decades) and plants his foot firmly on the necks of those arrogant dons.
I’m going to respectfully disagree with my critic colleagues on this one. Call Me By Your Name is creepy, not cool.
Rated R
2 Hours 10 Minutes
Get times and tickets at Fandango.com.
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Review
by Lisa Johnson Mandell @HomeInHollywood
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Review
by Lisa Johnson Mandell
Lisa,
Thank you for speaking to this alarming disconnect . Where in anyone’s view or reality is it ok for an adult to seduce a child ? And yes, young teenage males can be victims just as easily as young girls . I am a movie buff that will not be seeing this film no matter how many awards it wins . Thank you for being courageous enough to stand up and critique with a social conscience. In your words this premise is just plain creepy and unacceptable !
I totally agree, this film was creepy. The hairy legs of (31 year old Oliver) wrapped around the very young looking and acting 17 year old Elio. The book apparently depicted the characters having a 7 year diff in age….Oliver (Armie Hammer) looks every one of his 31 Years while Elio looks about 15. Yuck
Age of consent is 16, character is 17 and Marj, sorry you don’t like hairy legs.
Age of consent in Az, CaA, DE, FL, ID, ND, UT and WI is 18. Age differential element of statutory rape would add a few other states.
The issue is can a 17 yr consent in view of the age/power differential.
https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/75531/report.pdf
So, the issue is more nuanced.
So glad you’re addressing this. I’m baffled why no one else discusses this. Even in Italy where the age of consent is 14, there is only supposed to be a 3 year difference in age for minors.
Finally searched the net for any references to potential miscasting in CMBYN and found your review. It amazes me that so many people found Armie Hammer a suitable actor for this role. I agree with you that Hammer [31] looks his age and why the casting agent/director couldn’t see this (especially when Timothee Chalamet [21] looks barely 17) is mind boggling. The age difference between the two characters in the original story is 8 years, but Hammer looks at least 10, if not 15 years older. Furthermore, it seems improbable (not matter how liberal one’s parents may be) that they would condone this – again with the point of how the age difference reads on screen. Are there parents out there that would be OK with a man (who looks 30) bedding their 17 year old daughter (and under their own roof?) If a younger actor (or at least one that looks 24-25) had been cast, I think it would have been a much better movie. (Are things that bad in Hollywood or NYC that Hammer was the best and most suitable choice?)
I actually liked the movie a lot and found it very moving (especially TC’s performance), but the way the actor’s respective ages read on screen left me uneasy, especially when we don’t any more ammunition for homophobes and ignorants that equate homosexuality with pedophilia.
That’s exactly my feelings. I searched on Google to find somebody who would express that the way you did: WHO THOUGHT HIRING HARMER FOR THIS ROLE WAS A GOOD IDEA? I couldn’t watch the movie because it felt really creepy just for that reason. I’m not sure how nobody thought this
You who object are bringing your unease TO the story. It’s not IN the story (the novel) or in the movie. Show me one scene where Oliver “grooms” or “preys on” or manipulates Elio. You can’t. It’s not there. In fact Oliver says after his initial touching of Elio that the younger man’s resistance made him, Oliver, decide to “keep my distance”. Oliver urges Elio to slow down after they briefly make out in a field. And Oliver specifically ASKS Elio’s permission to kiss him in their first sexual night together. Did it strike you as “creepy” when Patrick Swayze courted and bedded Jennifer Grey in “Dirty Dancing”? The notion probably never occurred to you. Why are you so eager to deny a GAY 17-year-old the power to make his own growth choices, when his parents clearly believe he’s mature enough to make those choices? And suffer for them Elio most certainly does — but from a broken heart (ever experience that?), not from any moral or sexual undermining of his integrity as a person (the point of the father’s speech near the end). That’s a giant leap forward in the portrayal of same-sex love for the movies.
You are sooo right
Even if it were disturbing, that wouldn’t make it a bad movie. You yourself admitted it’s beautifully acted and shot. You didn’t really say much about why it is a bad movie.
Actors with two Jewish parents: Mila Kunis, Natalie Portman, Logan Lerman, Paul Rudd, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bar Refaeli, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Adam Brody, Kat Dennings, Gabriel Macht, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Erin Heatherton, Lisa Kudrow, Lizzy Caplan, Gal Gadot, Debra Messing, Jason Isaacs, Jon Bernthal, Robert Kazinsky, Melanie Laurent, Esti Ginzburg, Shiri Appleby, Justin Bartha, Margarita Levieva, James Wolk, Elizabeth Berkley, Halston Sage, Seth Gabel, Corey Stoll, Michael Vartan, Mia Kirshner, Alden Ehrenreich, Julian Morris, Debra Winger, Eric Balfour, Dan Hedaya, Emory Cohen, Corey Haim, Scott Mechlowicz, Odeya Rush, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is Jewish, too (though I don’t know if both of his parents are).
Actors with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers: Timothée Chalamet, Jake Gyllenhaal, Dave Franco, James Franco, Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Radcliffe, Alison Brie, Eva Green, Joaquin Phoenix, River Phoenix, Emmy Rossum, Ryan Potter, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Connelly, Sofia Black D’Elia, Nora Arnezeder, Goldie Hawn, Ginnifer Goodwin, Brandon Flynn, Amanda Peet, Eric Dane, Jeremy Jordan, Joel Kinnaman, Ben Barnes, Patricia Arquette, Kyra Sedgwick, Dave Annable, and Harrison Ford (whose maternal grandparents were both Jewish, despite those Hanukkah Song lyrics).
Actors with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers, who themselves were either raised as Jewish and/or identify as Jewish: Ezra Miller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Zac Efron, Alexa Davalos, Nat Wolff, Nicola Peltz, James Maslow, Josh Bowman, Andrew Garfield, Winona Ryder, Michael Douglas, Ben Foster, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nikki Reed, Jonathan Keltz, Paul Newman.
Oh, and Ansel Elgort’s father is Jewish, though I don’t know how Ansel was raised. Robert Downey, Jr., Sean Penn, and Ed Skrein were also born to Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. Armie Hammer, Chris Pine, Emily Ratajkowski, Mark-Paul Gosselaar are part Jewish.
Actors with one Jewish-born parent and one parent who converted to Judaism: Dianna Agron, Sara Paxton (whose father converted, not her mother), Alicia Silverstone, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.
As you said it yourself, Oliver did try to engage with a minor from the moment he first touched him. Don’t play the gay card. She said if the genders were switched people would be mad about it in this day an age. I’m gay and I don’t think we should glamourize the film just because it’s about same sex relationship. The film clearly promotes paedophilia and should’ve been banned. If you think it’s ok for a boy to have sex with an adult, then you are just sick as a paedoo if you’re not one.
Thank you for articulating what others seem to be willfully ignoring just because the film is beautifully shot and the actors good-looking. The age gap is unacceptable whatever local varying age of consent laws are. This is made much worse by the casting of a man looking in his thirties exploiting a vulnerable teenage boy. The balance of power and experience is totally one-sided. Whether boy or girl this is wrong and disturbing – and the father approving in the film only makes it sadder.
All these reviews praising it as romantic seem happy to ignore the essential wrongness of it.