Call Me By Your What Now?

"Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine..."

It's the title of the book, it's the title of the movie. It's the sweet mid-coital nothing that Oliver (Armie Hammer) whispers into Elio (Timothée Chalamet)'s ear. But it's not nothing, and lots of people don't see it as nothing - specifically I mean it seems to drive a lot of people batty. I've seen it come up on Twitter, in reviews of the film, and I have heard it in person from friends who didn't like the movie. "What the hell is that about?""Who would say such a thing?" So on. 

I have some ideas. (I know. You're shocked. Me with ideas about Call Me By Your Name? What is the world coming to, et cetera.) I also want to hear your ideas because my ideas are mostly just bumbling around not entirely formed - if author André Aciman has been asked about this or talked about it at length I haven't read it and I would like to, so somebody forward me that link if you've got it! - but let's just try to sort my ideas out.

First things first, Oliver is a major book nerd, in case you didn't notice.  They both are. CMBYN is a story about scholars - Elio lies around in the rain contemplating 16th century French romance novels written in German and when he brings it up to Oliver, Oliver's all, "Yeah, I know exactly the one you're talking about." As much as I project myself into the film while watching of the film I've never been, not even when I was a lazy English Major in college reading Rimbaud on the Quad, as impressive as these two are. But I know the type, and I was a bit of the type, and this is just the sort of thing these book nerds would get off on. 

It's poetical, a romantic flourish - a sublimation of one's self into the form of one's beloved. They're young - I know some people have trouble since Armie was 30ish when they filmed the movie but Oliver is only supposed to be 24, and Armie's performance gets giddier and more youthful the more he hangs out with Elio, and this seems like something he's either done before or always wanted to do. He's giddy, enamored - he bounces around once they consummate their thing. This has the feel of that youthful sort - set them alongside the tumble of names in Wuthering Heights, all Heathcliffs and Catherines falling forever through the ages. 

Do you think that Oliver got this idea from a former lover? Do we think that Oliver has had former male lovers? I can't remember if that's made explicit in the book or not, but the film doesn't hint either way. It seems possible to me - it's a game he tried before and enjoyed. We know so little of the Oliver outside of this summer in Italy; who knows? It's not the sort of thing he would do with the wife-to-be waiting at home though - that'd be like Ennis always flipping Alma over in bed. It reads as specifically Gay to me - the centuries of male-male romance propped up as some kind of divine  romantic narcissism, the mirrored images in love with one another, falling into your own reflection and drowning. 

I do think it's telling, in this respect, how very different physically that Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet are; telling at least with respect to Luca Guadagnino's intentions - I believe in the book they're written to look more alike than they end up looking in the movie? Anyway the actual physical - the six foot five muscular blonde versus the six foot slight brunette - is  made less important through this choice than the intellectual, the emotional, the spiritual aspect of this intimacy these two are bridging at this moment. Them looking like Gay Twins would be a distraction from that; it would put an emphasis on the Physical - we'd think they were only obsessed with one another because of how outwardly alike they were. Instead we can sense that it's something more, some exchange, right off the bat. As Elio's father says, "Because it was him, because it was me."

And that's what "Call me by your name and I'll call me by yours" as pillow talk comes down to mean for me - it's the secret shared language between two specific different people who've erased the outward and are now speaking to one another, and only one another. The reversing of names allows for all of the film's ideas about identity to mix up with this but ultimately what it's about is the same thing that I argued Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread to be about - it's about two people finding a way to speak to one another that seems crazy and weird to the outside world but which makes perfect and complete sense to the two people intimately involved with the speaking.

It's Twin Language gobbledegook as far as it concerns us outsiders - what matters is that they get it. What matters is that Elio can cut Oliver short on that fateful phone call at the end of the film by summoning it out of the ether - you can see it on Timothée's face at that moment as Oliver talks about his father sending him to a correctional facility. This is not the conversation I wish to be having right now, his face reads. And so he summons their secret code. Elio, Elio, Elio, Elio. And Oliver stops. He breathes in. He groans (and I do mean groans - Armie really delivers it) his own name out, Olivvvvver, as if they are in each other's arms again. he remembers everything, he says. And Elio smiles. The bridge they built to one another remains. They still have their secret place.

As it was, as it shall always be. Think back to the opening scene of the film - think of the very first words that Oliver and Elio say to one another. Oliver has just arrived. Elio comes downstairs to meet him. He walks into the library and his father introduces them waving his hand back and forth between the two of them. ""Elio, Oliver. Oliver, Elio." Already it's begun, the overlapping of names. Oliver smiles, reaches out to shake Elio's hand, and says his very American, "How ya doing?"

And as they shake hands Elio says back, "Nice to meet you. Elio." Clearly he's repeating his own name by way of introduction, but I think it'd be unwise to think this interaction meaningless or a mistake at this point - Elio looked Oliver in the eyes, shook his hand, and called him by his name. And that was just the beginning.
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My initial reaction to the movie from the NYFF right here

Day After list of thoughts just starting to form right here

My great big piece on the film's sex and voyeurism right here

Little love letter to Amira Casar (+ assorted thoughts) right here
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