Konstantinos Pappis’s review published on Letterboxd:
We tend to think of films as products. We like to break them down and dissect them, and during awards season, we honour the best achievements in directing, editing, acting, scoring, and curiously, the best film as a whole. But there are some films that feel so unmistakably natural that they seem to dismantle and transcend this barrier entirely. Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name offers an achingly beautiful and uniquely sensual experience, the kind where you forget you’re watching a film that was made by people, and instead just follow the people on screen, as if you, too, had spent an idyllic summer in rural Italy three decades ago, and the memory is only now coming slowly back to you. This intimate and truly absorbing romance, adapted from André Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name, transports you to a time and place that feels real yet at the same time unfolds like a sun-drenched dream, filled with so much detail and emotional intensity it barely resembles fiction.
As the credits roll, the camera lingers on a close-up of Timothée Chalamet as he sits by the fireside, and it’s impossible not to stay and anxiously observe every subtle change in his facial expressions. Two hours after you get introduced to just another movie character, you feel for him as if you’ve known him your whole life. And that’s because, on some level, we’ve all been that person, agonizing over the bittersweet nature of young love.
