‘Call Me By Your Name’: Luca Guadagnino Discusses Avoiding Cliches, Costumes & Narration [NYFF]

As a specific example of costume design informing the characters, he singled out a distinctive shirt Elio wears at the end of the film. “I liked very much how Giulia [Piersanti, the costume designer] indicated where Elio was going at the very end of the movie with this kind of New Romantic look, it was very beautiful. Sometimes when you work in a movie and you have fifty people around you, everyone has their own film and when she came with this shirt full of faces looking here and there I really thought it was beautiful because she found this idea that was very strong for him, it was very strong, and it helped me and Timmy put that last image together.”

On the film’s soundtrack and Sufjan Stevens as narrator
Guadagnino had two guidelines in mind while developing the film’s soundtrack. “One was Elio is a pianist, he’s a young pianist in the making, he may become a genius pianist afterwards. He plays and likes to transcribe music and adapt pieces that were not for piano for piano, in particular, he does that with the Bach piece that he teases Oliver with, so we wanted to be very close to him, to be very close for Elio, so we didn’t want to have the usage of music that was a sort of commentary on the images but more something that could have come from Elio himself. And so we thought of being very consistent to the time, 1983, and the kind of family, American-French-Italian, the level of education of the people and the kind of canon they would be a part of. So we went from the early 20^th century classics of Ravel and Debussy that in a way represent the curiosity of experiement that Elio himself embodies in his way of being to the more aggressive minimalism of John Adams.” Guadagnino’s second guideline was simply to be true to the time period, researching what was popular on the radio that summer.

An interesting point that Guadagnino returned to twice was that he struggled with the narration of the film, an issue that he was able to address with the film’s soundtrack. “The book is a Proustian book about remembering things past and indulging the melancholy of lost things. I felt that that was beautiful, but at the same time, I felt that a movie in present time would be much more efficient and strong in putting an audience in the shoes of these characters. Also, I personally dislike the idea of a voiceover of your main character telling you the story retrospectively because in a way it’s something that kills the surprise.” He shared that he is fascinated by films with omniscient narrators, like Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon,” and that “Call Me By Your Name” originally had such narration. When they jettisoned the narration, “in a way the narrator became Sufjan Stevens with his new songs made from now, from our [time].”

Gudagnino elaborated that he wanted a kind of narration that wasn’t first person and he “found in the Sufjan music a lyricism, both in the music and in the voice and in the lyrics itself, that had a beautiful elusiveness on one hand and on the other hand poignancy that were really resonant.”

On the film’s difficult path to the screen
The novel came out in 2007 and the film has been in development for almost that long. Gudagnino was originally brought onto the team as a location consultant, as a native of Northern Italy, and eventually became a producer before he decided to direct.

Some audience members were surprised to see that the screenplay was written by James Ivory, of Merchant-Ivory fame, who planned to direct at one point. Guadagnino explained that market realities prevented Ivory’s version from realization.

“The ways of cinema are always very cruel, complicated, difficult, merciless, and among the unfairnesses of life is the fact that we couldn’t put together the movie directed by James Ivory, because it was a much more costly film, it was a different film which didn’t meet the standards of the market. I have to be blunt, that’s it,” he said.

Guadagnino went on to praise Ivory’s work dating back to the 1960s and laud Ivory’s generosity for blessing his version of the film. In comparing their styles, he said “to be a bit cinephiliac I would say that my approach is more French.”

Contemplating James Ivory’s version is a fascinating thought experiment, but we expect audiences will continue to enjoy Guadagnino’s version. “Call Me By Your Name” is now playing at the New York Film Festival and will hit theaters on November 24th.

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