In Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino uses framing and editing to expand and contract time, allowing us to experience it in the same way that Elio and Oliver do. This is the seventh piece in our Special Issue on Call Me by Your Name. Buy the eBook of the issue here. Read the rest of the issue here.
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It’s the summer of 1983, somewhere in the north of Italy. After weeks of flirtation and romance, 24-year-old Oliver (Armie Hammer) and 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) are savouring their last night together in Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name. They are locked in a passionate embrace, but Oliver pulls away when he hears the Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way” playing in a nearby street. “You’re missing it!” he cries, running off to find the source of the music, hands in the air with excitement, expecting Elio to follow lest he miss the song entirely — a song that played a crucial role in their courtship.
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Oliver’s playful admonition could just as easily refer to Elio’s attitude throughout the film. First, Elio misreads and thus misses Oliver’s multiple advances. Even once their relationship begins, Elio is in such a hurry to act on his newfound desire that he dives headfirst into it, never pausing to fully relish the experience. For Elio, it’s first love; he knows intellectually that it has to end, but he doesn’t feel that it will, the way Oliver already does. This isn’t Oliver’s first rodeo, even if it is perhaps his first connection this deep, so he is careful to enjoy every minute of it.
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André Aciman’s novel, on which the film is based, is told by Elio looking back on this pivotal summer, decades after it happened. It is tinged with the melancholy of loss, and the prose never breaks up into neat chapters; it all flows together like a memory. Guadagnino’s film, by contrast, takes place fully in the present, asking us to experience Elio’s delirious passion and all-consuming obsession with Oliver alongside him, in the now. And yet Guadagnino still captures, however subtly, the novel’s more mature outlook by inviting us into Oliver’s more reflective perspective and playing with how we experience time in the film. We are constantly reminded of its passing; how much we are missing it.
Buy our Call Me by Your Name Special Issue eBook, and read Alex Heeney’s initial Sundance review, in which she first began exploring the ideas she expands on in this essay.
In the first half of the film especially, Guadagnino replicates in us Elio’s experience of the intensity and excitement of first love. Chalamet’s performance is crucial, but what keeps us present in Elio’s headspace, rather than judging him from afar, is the way Guadagnino stretches and contracts time, while simultaneously using sound and image to heighten our awareness of Oliver’s presence or absence. The film’s pacing and cutting heighten interactions between Elio and Oliver that could otherwise seem banal — but are actually pregnant with meaning. These heightened interactions almost have the texture of memory: these are the moments Elio will look back on, years from now.
[clickToTweet tweet=”‘The film’s pacing and cutting heighten interactions between Elio and Oliver that could otherwise seem banal.'” quote=”‘The film’s pacing and cutting heighten interactions between Elio and Oliver that could otherwise seem banal.'”]
Because Elio’s desire for Oliver is so strong, and because summer won’t last forever, Guadagnino makes every minute exchange feel momentous. Even the shortest conversations unfold in single long takes — as if the camera were afraid to blink — elongating time, keeping us in a moment that always feels too brief — and that ends on an abrupt, hard cut. When Elio flirts with Oliver by playing three variations on a Bach tune, intended to playfully infuriate Oliver while showing off his own talent and intelligence, the scene unfolds in a single uncut take. As soon as Elio has Oliver’s complete attention, Oliver takes a breath to speak, and we cut. Presumably, a conversation followed, but we aren’t privy to it because it’s the precursor to that chatter that is crucial — and we share Elio’s frustration that it ends too soon.
Guadagnino draws our attention to how fleeting these intense interactions are. Oliver repeatedly rushes out of the frame with a hurried “later”, the camera then lingering on Elio’s confused or baffled face, effectively stretching out and magnifying every tiny interaction with Oliver. When Elio first shows Oliver around the nearby town Crema, Elio is still in the midst of answering Oliver’s question when he realises that Oliver is already packing up his belongings — before leaving the frame and Elio. The pattern repeats when Oliver makes his most forward move, massaging Elio’s shoulder during a volleyball game: his arm invades the frame, then he himself invades Elio’s personal space. Before Elio has any time to process what is happening, Oliver runs out of the frame and back to his game.
[clickToTweet tweet=”‘Because Elio’s desire for Oliver is so strong, and because summer won’t last forever, Guadagnino makes every minute exchange feel momentous'” quote=”‘Because Elio’s desire for Oliver is so strong, and because summer won’t last forever, Guadagnino makes every minute exchange feel momentous'”]
And yet when Elio is waiting to see Oliver, a single afternoon can feel like an eternity. On the day Elio decides to get personal with Oliver’s swim trunks, Guadagnino heightens the languor of the afternoon with a series of short scenes beforehand. We watch Elio playing the piano, intercut with still shots of an empty kitchen and unused bikes, before Elio wanders around the house, looks at Oliver’s book, and proceeds to his bedroom. Even Elio’s entrance into Oliver’s room is drawn out — he is interrupted by the maid, Mafalda, returning laundry, and has to check the coast is clear before he can venture into Oliver’s private space. Once there, Guadagnino lengthens the moment again by letting Elio’s sexual experimentation unfold in one uninterrupted take.
Even when Guadagnino focuses on Elio, Oliver haunts the periphery of the frame, making us as aware as Elio is of Oliver’s presence and absence. While Elio transcribes music at the foreground of the frame, Oliver is visible in the background, pedaling his bike. Just as often, it’s the sound of Oliver that intrudes. While we watch Elio in the foreground, a blurry Oliver and Mr Perlman sit in the background, and we can faintly hear them chatting. On the day Elio is meant to meet Oliver at midnight to finally consummate their flirtation, we watch Elio lounging on the couch for a nap, and hear Oliver’s voice coming from the study; Oliver is so close and yet so far.
Even when the pair are together, Guadagnino stretches out the build-up to key turning points in their relationship. Before Elio confesses his feelings for Oliver at the WW1 monument in Crema, Guadagnino presents a series of short scenes showing Elio and Oliver preparing to leave home, packing a backpack, taking out the bikes, and then riding them into town; the casual rhythm underlines their comfort with one another. But it also makes Elio’s turmoil — to speak or to die — all the more excruciating: should he risk losing what he has for the hope of something more? Stretching out the time it takes to get to Crema effectively offers Elio opportunities to turn back, but he doesn’t. Similarly, though Elio’s confession plays out in a single take, a series of short scenes are required to bring us from Crema to Elio’s secret spot where they take their relationship to the next level. We don’t just watch them get on their bikes and arrive; multiple shots chart their progress on the journey to this sanctuary.
Once Elio decides to speak, he and Oliver switch gears and trade speeds. Elio is suddenly in a rush to dive headfirst into their relationship; Oliver becomes pensive and restrained. At the same time, Guadagnino shifts the perspective from which he is shooting: our earlier insights into Elio processing their interactions are replaced by private moments with Oliver. After obliquely sharing his feelings, Elio bikes off into the back of the frame, but Oliver stands stunned by his bike in the foreground, thinking through his next action. Even Oliver’s earlier decision to leave the scene as soon as Elio confesses — he goes to pick up his manuscript — is yet another way for him to slow things down.
[clickToTweet tweet=”‘Once Elio decides to speak, he and Oliver switch gears and trade speeds.'” quote=”‘Once Elio decides to speak, he and Oliver switch gears and trade speeds.'”]
When Oliver finally lets his guard down, he luxuriates in every precious moment. As the pair depart for Bergamo together before Oliver leaves for good, Elio doesn’t even spare a moment to say goodbye to his parents; he’s already found his seat on the bus. But Oliver is all too aware that this summer and its romance aren’t permanent; they will soon be memories. He extends his farewells, first with words before boarding, then by walking to the back of the bus to keep waving at the Perlmans. Oliver realises that their trip is the beginning of the end — and by giving us this time with Oliver, Guadagnino makes us conscious of this, as well.
On their Bergamo getaway, Guadagnino regularly gives us a beat with Oliver just taking it all in. On a hike, Elio runs ahead and up the hill while Oliver pauses to look around. Shots of water gushing over the cliff capture the beauty of the surroundings, but also serve as a metaphor for time passing. Even the way some days fade into others, with dissolves instead of hard cuts, signals that time is slipping away. Above all else, Oliver doesn’t want to miss it.
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Perhaps we feel this most on the couple’s last night together. At dawn, Oliver watches Elio sleep, thinking back on their time together, memorizing it, and processing that it is coming to a close. A whistle outside stirs his attention and as he turns toward the window, there’s a hard cut to the train he’ll depart on the next day — the sounds of his departure seeming to seep into the night before. How quickly it all ends.
Only now does Elio register that it can’t go on forever. Hugging Oliver goodbye, he refuses to let go, forcing Oliver to lean back in for a second hug. In a single take, we watch Oliver get onto the train, and look back only once, briefly. He has been preparing for this with all those beats he’s taken for himself. Elio hasn’t. The scene doesn’t close on Oliver looking back for the last time. Instead, Guadagnino stays with Elio watching the entire train leave the station in a single take, as the summer, and their romance, slips away.
Call Me by Your Name made our list of the Best Editing of 2017, where we discussed all the other reasons the editing is so terrific. We’ve written about how important the editing is to storytelling in Personal Shopper, where it puts us in the headspace of the depressed protagonist who is constantly losing time. We’ve since interviewed several film editors about what goes into the process, including Joe Bini on You Were Never Really Here and Jonathan Alberts about Lean on Pete. [/wcm_restrict]
