Review: Call Me By Your Name (15)

SUN-KISSED ROMANCE. Timothee Chalamet and Arnie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name.

If the precipitous act of falling giddily in love could be distilled, the resulting nectar would surely taste as bittersweet and intoxicating as Call Me By Your Name.

Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s sensual, rhapsodic and gorgeously restrained romance is a film to reinvigorate your belief in the power of cinema to perfectly reflect the vagaries of the human condition.

Screenwriter James Ivory spares us neither intense pleasure nor body-shaking anguish as he details the passionate affair between a precocious 17-year-old boy (Timothee Chalamet) and an older man (Armie Hammer) against the sun-kissed backdrop of 1980s northern Italy.

It speaks eloquently to anyone who has experienced an irrational rush of blood to the head in the name of love.

There aren’t enough superlatives to lavish on the lead performance of 21-year-old Chalamet, who learned Italian, piano and the guitar in three months to perfectly embody his lovesick teenager.

Every facet of the character’s delirium and despair is captured in exquisite detail on his face, including an extraordinary final unbroken shot over the closing credits that guarantees no one leaves the darkened cinema with dry eyes and an unbroken heart.