Call Me By Your Name was a beautiful love story, but does it need a sequel? Luca Guadagnino spoke to The Hollywood Reporter at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, where he talked about the possibility of continuing the story of Elio and Oliver in a Call Me By Your Name sequel in a format similar to the Before Sunrise series.
The Oscar contender is set in 1983, but takes place in the Italian countryside and mostly evades discussing the emerging AIDS crisis. However, the director points out that the series will tackle HIV/AIDS if it continues, stating, “I think it’s going to be a very relevant part of the story.” On where the film would start, Guadagnino says he would have Elio watching Paul Vecchiali’s 1988 film Once More in a movie theatre, which THR points out is “the first French movie to deal with AIDS.”
“I think Elio [Timothee Chalamet] will be a cinephile, ” he says. “That could be the first scene [in the sequel].” He continues:
“The novel has 40 pages at the end that goes through the next 20 years of the lives of Elio and Oliver, so there is some sort of indication through the intention of author Andre Aciman that the story can continue…In my opinion, Call Me can be the first chapter of the chronicles of the life of these people that we met in this movie, and if the first one is a story of coming of age and becoming a young man, maybe the next chapter will be, what is the position of the young man in the world, what does he want — and what is left a few years later of such an emotional punch that made him who he is?”
Personally, I found Call Me By Your Name to be a truly amazing film that captured a highly emotional chapter in Elio and Oliver’s lives. The setting of the Italian countryside in summer was almost fantastical. Though their relationship might’ve been but a short period of time in their lives, the memorable words from Michael Stuhlbarg, along with the final scene to “Visions of Gideon,” show us how strongly these events shape their lives and the strength it takes to treasure a painful and powerful love. Does that loving affair become only a footnote in their later lives, like so many of our own? The way it ended was perfect and part of that perfection, I think, was in the shortness of that time—we don’t know how Oliver’s marriage will go, or what path Elio goes down later in life.
Still, that’s not to say a series wouldn’t be powerful and important, especially with the direction to ground the film more in the struggles of the time. There’s no question that many who saw Call Me By Your Name are heavily invested in these characters, and would be curious to see who they become and where they end up.
What do you think about a Call Me By Your Name series?
(via AV Club, image: Sony Pictures Classics)
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