Call My By Your Name, Featuring Sufjan Stevens

This weekend I saw Luca Guadagnino's latest film, Call Me By Your Name, featuring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet.

It was a daydream, a quiet splendor, a longing of Italian summertime adventure and romance, a nostalgic memory, a poignant lesson.

Sufjan Stevens' "Visions of Gideon" is the final song of the film, playing as Elio (played by Chalamet) perches down in front of the fireplace, processing the phone call he just received, and filtering it through the wisdom his father once shared:

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!

The camera holds on this moment as the credits begin to scroll beside Elio's face, the world carrying on with his mother and Mafalda, the house maid, setting the dinner table, behind him and out of focus. It's a hard-hitting ending, this song fueling the fire and settling the nerves, at once.

xxChris