Review of Call Me by Your Name

I could not get involved. The setting of well off people summering in the beautiful Italian countryside has become a tired cliche. Armie Hammer's Oliver is the most bleached out Aryan looking Jew imaginable; he looks like the epitome of every Ralph Lauren ad ever made. Timothy Chalament is a convincing Elio, but his search to find his sexual identity in this setting is truly a First World Problem. Most importantly, there simply isn't enough conflict to make the story interesting. Everyone is simply too nice and too reasonable; Michael Stuhlberg's climactic speech of reassurance not only goes on too long but sounds like it came from a textbook; it is Polonius for our time. The effort to create some tension in a young gay man's coming of age by setting the problem 35 years ago in the early 80s is ineffective, in large part because nobody seems to be aware that AIDS exists. It's well made, well performed and beautiful to look at, but it falls flat.