Ever since the novel by Andre Aciman was published in 2007, “Call Me By Your Name” has been on the path to the big screen. Originally, director Luca Guadagnino was hired as a location consultant for the film’s northern Italy settings, with James Ivory slated to write and direct. However, Guadagnino’s involvement become more involved as the project developed, eventually coming on as a producer, and finally, landing himself behind the camera.
“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,” Guadagnino said recently at the New York Film Festival about Ivory’s version that didn’t make it to the big screen.
Nonetheless, Ivory remained on board the project, retains a screenplay credit, and was very much involved in the project “right up to the point of the shoot.” However, he does lament that the acclaimed film didn’t take the romance between Armie Hammer and Timothee Chalamet one step further.
“Certainly in my screenplay there was all sorts of nudity. But according to Luca, both actors had it in their contract that there would be no frontal nudity, and there isn’t, which I think is kind of a pity,” Ivory told Variety. “Again, it’s just this American attitude. Nobody seems to care that much, or be shocked, about a totally naked woman. It’s the men. This is something that must be so deeply cultural that one should ask: ‘Why?’ ”
True, there is a double standard to big screen nudity between men and women, particularly in American cinema. But I’d also argue the balance between innocence and lust is finely tuned in “Call Me By Your Name,” and full frontal nudity might’ve tipped the scales one direction too far. But that’s just my opinion.
“Call Me By Your Name” opens on November 24th.