I remember everything: The many closures of Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name

Luca Guadagnino‘s 2017 film Call Me by Your Name is a subtle work with a lot going on between the lines. This article is a guide to its final scenes. Through an abundance of visual examples, lines will be drawn to earlier parts of the story to map out the path towards closure, of not only its characters but the film itself.

(There is also a second article, discussing the piazza scene, the hotel room scene and windows as motif. The third and final article highlights some of the film’s smaller moments, discusses the use of close-ups, track-in camera movements and dissolves, examines the pervasive use of fruit as a metaphor of sexual desire, and looks at other motifs, staging ideas, echoes and other structural properties. There is also an enclosure listing the film’s many long takes.)

Before the analysis starts, however, some words about a fascinating feature of Call Me by Your Name that adds considerable layers to an already complex film. Embedded in its body is an extensive network of cultural and historical references. Against this backdrop, the film’s central theme of daring to act upon one’s deepest emotions gains a timeless dimension, properly so since this has been a central issue for human beings all through the ages.

Thus, in a pivotal scene where 17-year-old Elio starts to indicate his feelings for the 24-year-old Oliver, a visitor with the family, the camera looks up into the sky to take in a monument over a World War I battle and later gazes up at an old church. At a later point in the narrative Mussolini is invoked. The action unfolds either against a peaceful rural nature basically untouched by modernity, or against small, interchangeable Northern Italian cities whose architecture recalls centuries of human culture. One could easily envision the family’s small stone swimming pool being used by ancient Romans. In one scene Elio’s mother reads aloud from a 16th century story collection, which posits the film’s central question as “is it better to speak or to die”, and as soon as that is uttered, there is a power failure, stripping a layer of modernity away from the characters, who now sit in the dark.

Music from various periods is played: for example, Bach from the 18th century, Satie and John Adams from the respectively early and late 20th century, pitted against modern pop and rock, for example a Giorgio Moroder tune and a Psychedelic Furs song during a dance event. There is also an almost constant emphasis on versions of the same material: in a memorable scene, Elio says about a Bach piece: “I just played it the way Liszt would have played it if he’d altered Bach’s version,” and soon after “I just played it the way Busoni would’ve played it if he’d altered Liszt’s version.” (Liszt and Busoni are themselves from different epochs.) This is in playful revenge for Oliver’s virtuoso analysis of the etymological roots of the word “apricot”, rattling off permutations of the word from a variety of historical cultures.

Building on that, as many as four different languages are spoken in the film: English is predominant, French and Italian are secondary languages, and German is included, and translated from, during the reading-aloud session – all methods of expressing the same thoughts. Elio is reading an Italian translation of Pearl S. Buck’s “Dragon Seed“, just one among a series of novels seen in the film, joining all its representations of other art forms. (The film Call Me by Your Name is itself a re-imagining of another work, the source novel by André Aciman.) Several pieces of music appear in both diegetic and non-diegetic form.

Furthermore, Elio is transcribing music into written notes, the same material in another form. During the disco scene the characters are translating music into dance.

And Elio is transcribing his thoughts into words.

The same landscape, in two different forms.

This situation, which might seem merely goofy and even heavy-handed, has real significance in context with the film’s historical-cultural backdrop.

In the image above, not only was this (part of a) statue involved in a 19th century romantic relationship, given as a gift to a beloved – complementing Elio and Oliver’s romance – but it is, in keeping with our discussion, a copy, made after an original by the ancient Greek sculptor Praxiteles. It is also part of set, of which a pair were melted down and “recast as a particularly voluptuous Venus”, another transformation. Finally, the film’s archaeological aspect is its most far-reaching historical tentacle and representation of its oldest art form.

Even though Call Me by Your Name has received a lot of acclaim, it is also a divisive film. Its detractors often point to its cultural references and variety of languages as mere affectations, a surface gloss of ingratiatingly “cultured” signalling. On the contrary, they seem to be part of a meaningful system. The film attempts to superimpose the personal story of Elio and Oliver on to a higher, poeticised level of timelessness and the understanding of life as permutations of the same basic experiences.

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The following analysis takes the form of a written “commentary track”. A variety of film-analytical points will be made for each scene, but with a special emphasis on how they are echoing earlier situations. “I remember everything” is a pivotal line of dialogue, and in the closing stages of Call Me by Your Name, it is as if the film itself is reminiscing about its past, striving to achieve closure along with the characters. The analysis is centred on screen shots, where images depicting those earlier callback situations are marked by red borders. The article presupposes that the reader is familiar with the film. (A plot description can be found here.)

The station

We shall embark upon the analysis with Oliver’s departure and his farewell to Elio at the train station in Clusone. The previous scene, in their hotel room the night before, ended in a melancholy close-up of Oliver, who seems to have realised they will never see each other again, that as soon as he is back in the US he will succumb to the pressure of adopting a traditional life. (He has an on-and-off girlfriend whom he hasn’t mentioned yet to Elio.)

As if Oliver had already left Elio behind, we see him alone in the beginning of the scene. Elio is wearing Oliver’s present: the shirt Oliver had on when he arrived in Italy. Its presence makes Oliver’s arrival and departure mirror each other, while the change in ownership is part of the merging of their personalities. In fact, since they have “switched names” it is still “Oliver” who wears it. (Oliver’s name contains all the letters of Elio’s, as if they were predestined to meet and get intertwined.)

The usually voluble Oliver is silent for the entire scene. Ironically, Elio was wrong when he told his parents: “This is how he’ll say good-bye to us when the time comes – with his… ‘Later’.” There will be no “later” – this is not the behaviour of people expecting to see each other again. While the camera is closing in, they embrace and when Oliver tries to end it, there is another embrace, more intense this time since Elio puts his arm around him. Like during their reunion in the city after the night of lovemaking (“I would kiss you if I could”), social convention makes it hard for them to kiss, so the goodbye becomes measured and platonic.

Very soon after Oliver has entered, the conductor shuts the door, as if this is a prison train for Oliver. The conductor is middle-aged and in an official capacity, as if representing an entrenched, established society denying the two lovers fulfilment.

The mood is in enormous contrast to the exaggerated, exuberant farewell with Elio’s parents when the lovers left in the bus. Also, Elio is now left behind like Chiara at the bus stop – both contenders for a relationship with Oliver. Was the main reason for her turning up here to create an echo with Elio’s own farewell? Her presence also leads our thoughts to Marzia, another disappointed lover, who is also invoked when Elio’s mother, with her usual kindness, invites the pair to dinner.

Oliver’s barely 90-second departure scene is captured in only two shots, but could easily have been done in one continuous take. There is a cut, however, and it seems designed to happen with maximum impact and meaning, at the exact time the door is shut and the conductor’s whistle is sounded, as additional reinforcement of their separation.

Oliver can only muster a short, dejected glance in Elio’s direction (the last time they ever look at each other)…

… and during this agonisingly protracted 39-second shot we never see Elio’s face. There is no sign of Oliver. (Someone did wave goodbye from an open window, but this is not him.)

Afterwards the camera sneaks closer, with an intensifying effect, to a devastated Elio. (It does not help his emotional state that he is probably terribly hung over after the festivities the night before.) The situation recalls an earlier scene of supreme heartache as Elio sits pining for Oliver to come home, accompanied by “Futile Devices“. This time, however, there is no more hope.

Overwhelmed, Elio cannot bear the thought of going home on his own volition, so he phones for his mother to come and get him. One of the film’s strengths is the backdrop of utter normalcy against which the emotional drama unfolds, including the lady behind him here: the world goes on, uninterested in Elio’s disaster. Moreover, she recalls the elderly lady who gave Elio and Oliver water during one of their bike rides. Through the photograph in the archway behind her she is connected to Mussolini, an authoritarian figure further strengthening the film’s backdrop of a conservative society frowning upon homosexuality.

Driving home

Driving a crushed Elio home, his mother comforts him by touching his head, like Oliver tried to caress him after their night of lovemaking. Elio rejected him, however.

The brief scene ends in a shot of the empty road in front of the car. It has no particular narrative function (and Elio never looks ahead in the scene so it is hardly his point-of-view), so it seems a comparison between the current emptiness and the memory from happier days of the many shots of the two biking together. We shall see that an emphasis on the emptiness of spaces once inhabited by Oliver, and other reminders of him, is a prominent feature of the film’s closing stages.

A stop in the city

On their way home, they stop in the city, which specifically calls back to the scene with the bar where a surprised Elio realises that Oliver, while being distant to him, seemed to have easily forged bonds with the local card players. Elio’s mother now enters the same bar, and while Elio is waiting, the car radio plays “J’Adore Venise” with Loredana Bertè, the very tune that played inside the bar in the earlier scene.

On a more general level, the city stop also echoes the film’s many interchangeable urban scenes, for example Elio and Oliver’s first conversation during the bank account foray (top), and the seminal “speak or die” scene at the piazza with the Battle of Piave monument (bottom).

Elio encounters Marzia, who wants to clear the air – “speak or die” again – and stay friends despite Elio’s betrayal. Marzia is seldom dressed in strong and uniform colours, but here she is wearing a colour denoting conciliation and stability. This compares tellingly with her dramatic red during the break-up and her yellow dress, signalling happiness or energy, during the date at the Perlman house, where they had sex in the loft.

The staging of their handshake (first an outstretched hand, from the left) directly points back to the Lake Garda scene, where Elio and Oliver made a truce. But as Marzia confirms that their friendship is “for life”, the indirect handshake at the lake can be said to represent the temporary nature of the relationship. Archaeology is also the direct reason for Oliver’s trip to Italy, so using a recovered artefact like this in a handshake takes on a symbolic value.

Let us dwell a bit on the lake scene. Soon a statue is rescued from the water…

…since it is likely that the earlier arm belongs to this statue, we get a sense of completion and progress, foreshadowing the eventual consummation of Elio and Oliver’s love. The two are now more at ease with each other, but they are still touching indirectly, through the statue.

The next shot may seem just for the sake of atmosphere – or realism, a natural activity of people by a lake giving a sense of “lived life” to the film – but seen in context, it actually has meaning, as a communion with the statue and the past, the characters immersing themselves in the water from where the statue came.

There is also a curious echo with an even earlier scene, where Oliver, who has a habit of abrupt behaviour, suddenly lets himself fall into the swimming pool, lying motionless as if a statue.

Just before Oliver fell into the pool, the handshake was echoed by Elio’s outstretched hand to get Oliver’s manuscript. That too is about ancient times, and is part of the process where the two future lovers are inching closer to each other, by indirect means. The Lake Garda handshake may seem heavy-handed and too obvious, but it is actually the tip of an iceberg, an enabling instance for a web of connections.

Elio’s meeting with Marzia ends in a warm embrace, Elio clinging to her, like he did in the embrace at the station, in both cases with Elio to the right and the others dominating the image. Since Elio is wearing Oliver’s shirt, one can say that the later embrace is connecting all three of them.

This endearing, almost childlike scene is the last we see of Marzia, such a sweet and honest person, played by Esther Garrel, the most sympathetic character in the film besides Elio’s mother.

Home

Everything is the same as Elio returns but everything has changed. There is no point-of-view from above this time, but Anchise, the Perlmans’ handyman, preserves the outsider’s look.

Elio arrives in the same manner as Oliver (it is not the same car though). Since he left he has lost a lot of his innocence, become more adult, more like Oliver whom he has “replaced” – in keeping with the merging of their identities and sharing each other’s names. The car parks in the exact same spot as the earlier arrival, almost directly beneath the window of Elio’s temporary room, from where he and Marzia looked down at Oliver being greeted by the Perlmans.

Elio enters his room. In the source novel he is heartbroken that his own things have already been moved back from his provisional room, so that every trace of Oliver is obliterated. In the film this goes too fast for us to notice, but we register the emptiness of Oliver’s absence.

As he walks into the room, one of the film’s many beautiful dissolves starts to weave its magic (this is of course also the perfect device to express Elio’s sense of dislocation and estrangement)…

…because he is not only walking into the emptiness of the room, but into the dissolve, which leads to another emptiness, that of these steps (it cannot be determined where this is; they might lead to the location of the lovers’ nocturnal conversation after the peach scene, the same place where Oliver spent many a sleepless night, pining for Elio)…

…more movie magic as a person starts to materialise…

…Elio’s father in his study, ready for his heartfelt monologue directed at Elio. The treatment of their figures via the dissolves also connects father and son, and this scene will reveal that they have more in common than we thought.

Conversation with Father

Over the empty steps we heard the tinny, distant sound of the bell that Mafalda the maid uses to signal that dinner is served. This is another reminder of Oliver, because bells have constantly been connected to him throughout the film. See this enclosure for a list of all occurrences.

The monologue scene too is ringing with echoes from earlier situations. Elio has skipped dinner, and ignored the dinner bell we just heard, like Oliver did after arrival. Dr. Perlman is reading something, possibly Oliver’s manuscript. The scene unfolds in the same room where Elio and Oliver greeted each other for the first time.

Perlman is smoking (and he also has a glass of liquor handy), something we have only seen him do once before (and also then probably meaningfully, see below). This is Perlman’s big scene and his cigarette echoes how Oliver starts smoking for the first time during another big scene, the pivotal piazza scene where Elio declared his feelings for Oliver.

The first time Elio smokes is during another momentous event, in two ways: (1) for a reason not fully understood by himself he becomes fascinated with the dancing Oliver in the disco scene, and (2) he leans forward into the film’s first tight close-up, not until (slightly more than) 28 minutes.

For a considerable time in the beginning Elio sits like a statue, gazing out of the window. Windows are a motif of the film (to which we will return in the second article, here).

There is a memorable, highly atmospheric sound, from a window or door lazily and hypnotically hammering in the wind, like in an earlier scene when Elio was restlessly waiting, yearning for Oliver’s company, before he enters Oliver’s room to make out with his shorts.

Both in this situation and upon Oliver’s arrival, the scene starts out with Elio in the mirror. In the current scene he is totally sharp and more prominent, since he is the key figure now. In the earlier scene Oliver took his place in the mirror, now it is only loneliness.

In the early stages, there is a meaningfully empty seat between them – exactly the spot where Oliver sat in the etymology scene…

…making this posture all the more resonant (Perlman is caressing Elio’s head, like his mother did in the car)…

…before Elio ends the scene in this manner, askance, awkwardly coming to terms with his loss, comforted by his father’s monologue.

Perlman starts smoking as soon as Elio sits down, but there are also other developments within the scene. In between “just remember I’m here” and “right now you may not want to feel anything”, during the below montage, he takes off his glasses – there shall be no obstacles, as he eventually embarks upon his own contribution to the speak-or-die motif. (It is also important, of course, for his performance that his eyes can be seen clearly.)

At “and when you least expect it, nature has cunning ways of finding our weak spot,” the camera starts creeping in on them, as Perlman approaches the core of his message. Such a slow, very discrete intensifying camera movement is one of the most common devices in cinema, but in this film they seem reserved for its later stages, debuting during the lovers’ nocturnal conversation.

After the film’s third longest take (173 seconds), the scene structure changes into shot/reverse shots, but predominantly on Perlman (in unusually long takes of 27, 23, 76, 22 seconds). Notice that despite the great intensity and intimacy, there are still no close-ups – such shots are used very sparingly in this film.

During this scene Perlman, a likeable yet somewhat remote figure whom the cast list does not even allow a first name, gradually becomes a completely different person than the boyish, capricious professor we are familiar with. At one of the earlier dinners, he even approached the table jumping along, using the same kind of childlike, exuberant body language as his son. Now he is a tormented man, confessing that: “I may have come close, but I never had what you two have.” It is not entirely clear, though, whether he speaks of a gay relationship or merely one based on deep love. But considering the film’s central gay relationship, his use of the quite momentous phrase “clear the air”, his keen interest in the homoerotic male statues during the slide show (where he is smoking, like in this potential “coming-out” scene), and his agitation over Elio’s perceived dislike of the gay couple who come visiting, one tends to favour the former.

Speaking of them, the portrayal of Isaac and Mounir as “ridiculous” has been pointed out by detractors of the film as evidence of a hostility towards gay relationships. It is true that their appearances are a bit eccentric, but it is noteworthy that of all the family’s visitors it is precisely this couple that bring the most happiness into the Perlman home, putting Elio’s parents into a raucously good mood. Even though polite enough in their company, Elio is openly disdainful of them – he has probably never thought of himself as gay before and could well be prejudiced – and calls them Sonny and Cher. (When being called out for this by his father, he evades by claiming it is what his mother calls them, but as we have seen, Elio can be quite deceptive so this could be a lie – anyway, such a moniker can also be lovingly applied.) When Perlman confronts Elio about his disdain with “is it because they’re gay or because they’re ridiculous,” this does not necessarily mean that Perlman himself thinks they are ridiculous, but that he observes that Elio might think so.

As for the notion that Elio’s parents, and the film, might only approve of homosexuality as long as confined to youthful experimentation – thus the need for the middle-aged Isaac and Mounir to appear “ridiculous”– their enthusiastic reception in the epilogue of the news of Oliver’s marriage cannot necessarily be taken at face value, since this is consistent with general politeness and especially with Perlman’s usual boyish and exuberant behaviour. As for Annella, her knowing glances towards the lovers have never shown the slightest hint of disapproval, just quiet observation, and in one scene she actively tries to convince Elio that Oliver likes him. It is also she who chooses the Heptaméron story that inspires Elio to actively pursue Oliver, with the words “I can’t remember where we left off, but I think you’ll like this one.” Finally, it is she who suggests that Elio join Oliver on the trip. And during the monologue, a scene painted as being open and honest, Perlman says “how you live your life is your business” and “in my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away – pray their sons land on their feet, but I am not such a parent” (italics mine). Not such a parent that would not talk to a son in emotional crisis, or not such a parent that would hope his son’s homosexuality to go away? My guess is both, especially since it comes directly after: “Look, you had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you.”

In any case, Perlman is clear about his regret of having settled for less in later relationships. His intensity of emotion as the monologue progresses, especially when he says “we rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 – and have less to offer, each time we start with someone new,” forcefully indicates that he is speaking from his own bitter experience, and that his current marriage might well be based more on friendship than deep love.

It is easy to underestimate this scene. Upon this author’s first viewing it seemed surprisingly direct in a film otherwise relying on the unspoken, too much of a “big scene”, too preachy, too uncinematic in its static set-up and emphasis on dialogue. But it took only a second viewing, along with a better understanding of character, context and theme, for its magnificence to become apparent.

Michael Stuhlbarg is pained, sincere, comforting, loving, bitter, self-loathing, tearful, brutally honest, imploring his son not to end up like him, emotionally bankrupt – perfectly modulating, pausing and intoning his lines.

Timothée Chalamet‘s expressions in Elio’s reaction shots show a subtle trajectory of being quietly stunned and awed by his father’s sudden brutal yet strangely uplifting honesty and solidarity.

The scene becomes even more moving as the older man declares “something always held me back or stood in the way,” because here gentle piano music starts complementing his verbal lament. This also has a specific purpose: it is Ravel’s “Ma mère l’Oye” (some background for it here), a non-diegetic reprise of the music from a record player in an earlier scene, as Elio’s mother reads to them from the Heptaméron. That seance introduced the speak-or-die motif, which is very appropriate since this is what Perlman responds to now. This is an excellent example of how intellectual effort can heighten emotion, because since becoming aware of this musical connection, this author has started to mentally superimpose the two scenes on each other, to enriching effect. Perlman’s current bitterness also movingly points back in comparison to Elio’s more innocent, youthfully tortured behaviour during that reading session. (There is also a connection in mood, with rain and thunder in both scenes.)

Realising the connection between these scenes also makes apparent some exceedingly subtle mise-en-scène:

During the recital Dr. Perlman sits virtually motionless, as if silently deeply bothered by the material…

…and the scene ends like this, with Annella Perlman looking at her husband, as if suspecting there is something amiss, both with him and their relationship. (This shot, after a power failure has darkened the room, has been artificially brightened.)

During the entire reading session, Dr. Perlman sits with his hand very near Elio’s as if there is a bond between them forged by the Heptaméron story’s theme, and Annella looks over at him before enunciating the key phrase “is it better to speak or to die” (words lent extra emphasis through being immediately followed by the power failure). Earlier, as she reads the sentence “despite the friendship that blossoms between them”, Perlman repeats the word in German (“freundschaft”) and they say it together, as if in some odd mutual understanding. Is this saying something, in quiet acceptance, about the status of their own marriage? Perlman has only moved once, lightly caressing Elio’s arm early on in the reading, but when Elio says “I’d never have the courage to ask a question like that,” this elicits a bit of movement as Perlman bobs his head, responding “I doubt that”. After that he freezes again, while Annella keeps on gazing inscrutably at him.

Back in the monologue, Perlman comes to his central point: “Just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once, and before you know it, your heart’s worn out.” Soon Elio asks: “Does Mom know?” Perlman answers: “I don’t think she does.” This is also somewhat ambiguous. Is it about whether Annella knows about the true nature of Elio and Oliver’s “friendship”? (It seems clear, however, from the parents’ discussion of Elio and Oliver’s trip that they both know, even though it is unspoken. Add to this her many knowing glances towards the lovers throughout the film.) Or is it about Perlman’s personal regrets about his current life? Anyway, regardless whether Perlman is a closeted gay, living in a heterosexual marriage of convenience, or whether Perlman does not really love his wife, both alternatives would be embarrassing for her.

Exchanging half-smiles at the end.

Father and son look slightly naughty at the end, reinforced by the Ravel becoming playful as it enters a high register, as if they are on some level amused by their little secret. This is in fact reminiscent of Elio’s small deceptions in the film’s early stages: pretending to Annella that he hadn’t noticed Oliver’s arrival, “accidentally” dropping a book on the floor to wake up Oliver, pretending that he is engrossed in a book as Mafalda enters with clean laundry. And the whole family is in on the annual “apricot etymology test” of their guests, with Annella probably serving apricot juice on purpose to kick it off.

The Epilogue

The Ravel piece continues over the first two images of the epilogue, the same landscape in winter, the first one softly emerging from the film’s only fade-to-black, then merging with the next via a dissolve, as so many other times in the film. Then there is an abrupt cut to a third external image, with the music dying, as if a poetic dream has been crystallised into reality. The first image is of a field we have not seen before, the second brings back the little pond with the cold water, Elio’s secret place, and the third shows the Perlman house from a vantage point probably from the volleyball field. The images can be seen in the below slide show.

Elio soon enters the house. He still has the exuberant, show-off body language, but from the stylish attire he seems much changed. Although we have only seen him in his summer wardrobe before, the hair is different too. The family is celebrating Hanukkah, and while the family are “Jews of discretion”, Oliver proudly wore a Star of David necklace, inspiring Elio to do the same. The fact that the place is now teeming with Jewish paraphernalia foreshadows the return of Oliver to the film, by phone from the US.

Elio’s parents greet the news of his marriage with apparently great happiness. Notice the fireplace in the background, which is carefully visible at all times in this 28-second shot…

…but after the call they are clearly ambivalent, aware of the impact this will have on Elio. The flames are now more marginalised, like Oliver has receded from their lives.

Just before, two things are salient in this brief shot when the phone rings: Elio has put his head upside-down, referencing an iconic shot after the couple’s lovemaking. The fireplace in this room too is featured.

The map may allude to the physical distance between them and also the general part of the world where the call comes from…

…and the map will keep on looming over him all through their conversation. Is it a coincidence that the phone is of the same colour as the car that Oliver arrived in?

We recall the film’s very first images, presenting the six main players over close-ups of archaeological statues. This mirrors the last shot…

…the eternal close-up of Elio, all the more powerful since this type of shot is only very sparingly used elsewhere in the film. Even the window in the background is salient, snow falling on the landscapes that opened the epilogue, almost as if the cold from behind and the fire from the front is two different kinds of memories and two different types of comfort.

With its 208 seconds this is the film’s second longest shot, suitably only beaten by the central “speak or die” one-take scene in the piazza, which lasts 269 seconds. Right now he is heeding his father’s words and remembers even if it hurts. (“Right now, there’s sorrow, pain. Don’t kill it, and with it, the joy you felt.”) There is also an evident parallel to that fatherly monologue: it is now Elio who is working through a range of emotions. The shot is accompanied by “Visions of Gideon”, one of two songs Sufjan Stevens wrote especially for the film. (It was reportedly played on the set as Chalamet did the scene.)

Also here there is a callback, since the instrumental beginning of the song was playing for a spell when the lovers’ hands touched on the balcony (a cigarette again denoting desire) and as they sneaked quietly through the corridor to their night of lovemaking.

Together with others but alone in his grief, in the room behind Elio life is continuing, with the ritual of setting the table amidst the larger ceremony of Hanukkah. After a while the end credits start running alongside Elio’s face, but the shot ends with an extended period where he and the music reign supreme again. Then the music credits and the thanks appear against a black background, accompanied by the crackling of the fireplace, which finally gives way to an indeterminate outside sound, of wind perhaps, or a river quietly flowing – pointing back to the external shots that started the epilogue. (If a river, that may allude to Oliver’s note from this book about Heraclitus: “The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice, but that some things stay the same only by changing.”)

Just before the shot ends, and with it the film, he looks into the camera, briefly but pronounced. It is fitting that he concludes the film by acknowledging the existence of us, the viewers, who have identified with him so closely throughout the story and shared his suffering in this scene.

The film’s final action is Elio turning towards his mother who has called out for him. There is a clear parallel to another (much shorter) scene of lone contemplation, where Oliver sits in the hotel room on that last night, and he turns away, this too in response to a sound: a symbolical call-out to leave as we already hear the train horn from the next shot. Oliver too is allowed one of those prized close-ups.

Backtracking a little, we see there is one unlit candle. This is according to tradition, but the sole extinguished light is meaningful as a symbol of Oliver’s absence, especially since Elio walks straight to the fireplace and spends the rest of the film gazing into it. Compared to the other tiny ones, this “ninth candle” is a roaring, all-consuming fire that represents Elio’s love for Oliver and his inner turmoil and passion.

Earlier in the hotel room, while pondering, Oliver sits looking at the sleeping Elio (this shot has been artificially brightened)…

…so there is another echo here: Elio is looking at “Oliver” and Oliver is looking at Elio, each lover having lost the other. (Oliver intuits that the relationship is doomed here.) In both scenes, Elio and Oliver turn towards the objects of their desire before sitting down, up close.

The end credits list a procession of names. At the very end of the credits there is a placard with “in loving memory of Bill Paxton“, Guadagnino’s good friend who died recently, another lost love. The title of “Visions of Gideon” introduces another name. Names are a vital component of a cascade of closures in Call Me by Your Name.

Elio’s phone call with Oliver ends with Elio, suddenly impatient with words, calling Oliver with his own name. Elio says “Elio” once, clearly, before following up with whispering “Elio” eight times – corresponding to, respectively, the one unlit and the eight lit Hanukkah candles. Oliver responds with just one “Oliver”, before he sums up the whole experience with “I remember everything”.

That is the last thing Oliver says in the film. Elio’s last word is “Elio”. The very last words uttered in the film is his mother calling out Elio’s name to him, twice. When Elio is gazing into the fireplace, which represents Oliver, thinking about him, he is echoing Oliver’s “I remember everything”. So Elio’s final act in the film is a fulfilment of Oliver’s last words. His former lover has gifted him the means to reach closure and catharsis.

The fireplace in front of Elio occasionally makes his face aglow with light, as if the memories of Oliver, however painful, are giving him life. Which is what Call Me by Your Name is all about.

*

Enclosure: The bells of Oliver

Bells are constantly connected to Oliver, a logical choice considering his temporary stay and time running out for him and Elio. (It is also tempting to include the horn and whistles of this train departure.) Note that Mafalda’s dinner bell is elegantly allowed to start and finish the pattern. Time is also important during Elio’s long day until his midnight rendezvous with Oliver, with him obsessed by his wristwatch, checking it repetitively.

• the dinner bell the day Oliver arrives, which he sleeps through, and then skips dinner, thus connecting him specifically to the bell
• bells as Oliver walks out to breakfast the next morning (the same bells can also be heard very faintly during breakfast before the Lake Garda trip)
• bells cut short Oliver and Elio’s conversation during the bank account trip, abruptly making him go off on his own (the scene starts with the camera looking up at a belltower, with a large clockface on it)
• bells as Elio speaks disparagingly about Oliver during dinner after the volleyball scene
• bells when Oliver returns to the house one afternoon, before he barges into Elio’s temporary room, suggesting they go swimming
• bells as Elio enters Oliver’s room to fool around with his shorts
• bells during the pivotal piazza scene as Oliver returns outside, telling Elio that his pages have been mixed up, so he is free this afternoon
• bells the morning after Oliver and Elio’s lovemaking, before they go swimming
• bells as Oliver and Elio enter the bus, going on their trip
• bicycle bell in the same scene as Chiara comes too late to say goodbye to Oliver, whom she is interested in (she also sounds the bell as she arrives at the Perlman house to see Oliver, before the Lake Garda trip)
• bells as Oliver is dancing to “Love My Way” with a local girl during the trip with Elio
• the dinner bell after Elio has returned from the trip, connecting to Oliver again since Elio is pining for him, and also skips the meal like Oliver did

The only time bells are not directly connected to Oliver is during Elio and Marzia’s date in the city, when she speaks of how readers are secretive people. But her “they hide who they are” could refer to Oliver’s sexuality. There is also a very faint, single tolling of a bell after Elio has finished his phone call with his mother, which could be said to connect to Oliver, getting further and further away on the leaving train.