The titular request is an act of radical empathy and fusion. By calling each other by their own name, they abolish ego. “Call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine” means: I am you, you are me. For this moment, we are one person.
Released in 2017, Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name is more than a coming-of-age romance or a queer love story. It is a lush, sun-drenched meditation on the nature of desire, the pain of temporality, and the transformative power of first love. Based on André Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name, the film transcends its literary origins to become a sensory experience—a film you don’t just watch, but feel on your skin. Call Me By Your Name