After a five-year hiatus from the directing scene, it is as though filmmaker Luca Guadagnino is making up for lost time, now that he’s making serious headway on both A Bigger Splash – teeing up a reunion with Tilda Swinton in the process – and his remake of Suspiria.
But as The Film Stage reveals, another of Guadagnino’s creative ventures is inching closer to release, now that Call Me By Your Name has officially entered production. Starring Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg and Timothée Chalamet, the movie is pitched as an adaptation of André Aciman’s eponymous novel, and will be co-written by James Ivory (A Room With A View).
Rooted in an ’80s setting, Call Me By Your Name chronicles the blossoming romance between two young Italian men. There’s no mention of a release timeline in today’s report, but an official synopsis does outline the story at the heart of Guadagnino’s latest. And the director has promised “plenty of nudity” will be included in the final cut which, for those who have clocked eyes on the filmmaker’s past work such as Melissa P., shouldn’t be all too surprising.
Mid 1980’s. North of Italy not far from the Garda Lake. The sensitive and cultivated 17-year-old Elio, an only child of the American-Italian Perlman family, is facing another lazy summer at his parents’ villa when Oliver arrives. Oliver is an academic who comes to help Elio’s father, an eminent professor and specialist in Greek culture, with his work. The visitor will be their guest for the next six weeks during the summer. A charming 24-year-old American scholar, Oliver is breezy, spontaneous, handsome, and he’s the kind of person who charms everyone he meets. The meeting of these two young men sets in motion the danger of an unbridled adolescent passion in the setting of the beautiful and languid Italian countryside.
It’s official: Production is now underway on Call Me By Your Name, and we can readily expect Luca Guadagnino’s latest to jostle for a place in the festival circuit later this year.