Movies and shows, old and new, have helped us live vicariously through them. They have allowed us to travel far and wide at a time borders are shut and people are restricted to homes. In our new column What's In A Setting, we explore the inseparable association of a story with its setting, how the location complements the narrative, and how these cultural windows to the world have helped broaden our imagination.
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Images have been my greatest accomplices, conspiring for my escape from the everydayness and adversities I find myself in often, and inspiring me to take flights of fancy mid humdrum conversations. For a hopeless homebody such as me, they have even accomplished the unthinkable by urging me to leave the comforts of my nest and go chasing elusive, mostly fictional lands I had once spotted and fixated over in a film or show. Unsurprisingly, they have been my greatest retreats this pandemic season as well, as I found myself revisiting places in my imaginary (or not) map of "wanderlust" at the end of every unremarkable day.
Featuring prominently on this map are the places that Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name (2017) takes us, dipped in their sensuous and visual bounty. To me, Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver's (Armie Hammer) story is as much a reflection of their tranquil, lavish, and bucolic North Italian surroundings, as it is a consequence of their desires and sanguine dreams.
The dreamlike temperament of Crema in Lombardy, in a lot of ways, elevates the sensual chemistry shared between the couple, visually complementing the various milestones they attain in their relationship. As their relation changes seasons, so do their surroundings that reflect the various moods and stages of their love — from being in full bloom in spring, to withering away in the snow.
In my most forlorn moments, I have found myself instinctively travelling back to the poolside where Elio writes his music in a notebook, half immersed in water, as Oliver floats past him under the gentle Italian sun. This scene, much like most of the film, has decidedly embossed itself on my mind to inform my ideas and visions of an earth-side Arcadia. What the images in Call Me By Your Name do — in their lush blues, greens, and yellows — is arouse a bodily response to them by appealing to all our senses. You can touch the coolness of the water, smell the heady scents buzzing through the Perlmans' orchard, taste the voluptuous peaches, and feel the tenderness in the comune's air.
At this point, I cannot not mention the atmospheric music by Sufjan Stevens in the film that is, rather predictably, playing in my background as I write these words. His sound seamlessly flows into the images without vying for attention, much like everything else in the film where no one or nothing is trying too hard to claim space.
Everything seems to belong exactly where they should, woven into the fabric of the screenplay securely. It is that rare kind of cinematic harmony not frequently achieved, but is especially significant when creating worlds for characters who bare their vulnerabilities to fuel the narrative of a very important story. Therefore, everything that brings them to life and supports their beings should be appropriately delicate, responding to and mirroring the fragility of their social, political, and personal lives.
I believe it is safe to say that Elio and Oliver's love was meant to be conceived in a 1980s' Crema, and not amidst the modern flashy high-rises of a, say, Milan, where the intimacy of their bond would've found little breathing space.
To me, an elsewhere for them is unimaginable; it is profane. I also have no qualms in admitting that it is the locales, more than anything else — even the protagonists — that draw me back to the film repeatedly. It is the only kind of pilgrimage I religiously undertake while in search of some certainty and peace, knowing that these places will remain unchanged, waiting for me till the end of time after I have roughed it out in the real world.
By now, I know every corner and nook of the Perlman villa (or the actual 16th century Villa Albergoni in Moscazzano where the film was shot) — in all its decadent glory — and its neighbourhoods, better than my own. And even though I do not know how to ride one in real life, my imaginary escapades always involve taking off on a bicycle in a white-and-red plaid dress. By mid-afternoon, you can find me sprawled on my stomach, reading or snoozing by the riverside. The familiarity of this routine — despite the fact that it is all in my head — puts me to sleep even on the darkest nights. (To be honest, I am not sure if I would ever want to actually pursue any of these visions, not simply because I fear their pristineness would be tampered with, but also because it has become a deeply personal idiom that does not demand manifesting.)
It is rather obvious that the places in Call Me By Your Name are bona fide and important characters unto themselves, bearing witness to and immortalising the love of Elio and Oliver, even though it was star crossed. The scene where the pair walks into the freezing lake stays etched in my mind, and lives there rent free. It leaves me with tingly feet. Until I encountered this sequence four years ago, I never knew this was exactly the kind of adventure I wanted to partake in with a lover, where I can hear them exclaim how cold the water is against their skin as they enter it. For me, in that moment, Elio and Oliver attain a kind of spiritual oneness that is nearly perfect and too pure to be true — the kind that now pervades my ideas of love and companionship.
On stormy evenings, which we, in Kolkata, are being abundantly blessed with over the past couple of weeks, I withdraw into the rain-soaked, dimly lit, but cosy living room in the Perlman villa, where I curl into a ball with a book by the piano. On sultry summer afternoons, I float in their brick pool facing the brilliant sun, because where else would a person even possibly want to retire, if not in Guadagnino's Elysian little universe, brought to life on Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's 35 mm film with its unmatched warmth?
Call Me By Your Name's world is equal parts melancholic and hope-inducing, owing to the sheer abundance of life it is endowed with.
As a result, even though Elio stays behind to witness Oliver drift away from him, there is comfort to be sought in the fact that their memories and secrets have been journaled into the rivers and gardens they left their footprints in, and will be waiting for Elio to return to and start afresh from, amid every other uncertainty.
Their love achieves a degree of sacredness and a tinge of ethereality as a result of where it happens. Their surroundings urge them to be fearless in their passions and pursuits — a feat that one can imagine might be difficult to accomplish in an intrusive metropolis with its probing eyes — which Oliver loses the moment he goes back to the city. Maybe he is forced to settle for a lesser, inauthentic version of himself once he abandons the person he became in Crema.
With each rewatch of Call Me By Your Name, a small something inside of me transforms viscerally, unknowingly. It is an experience I hold close to my heart in the direst of times like a clutch, a balm, an old trusted friend whom I have known for long in their entirety, and who has known me in mine. The images in the film bleed out of my screen and evoke a kind of awe and comfort, all at once, revealing to me just how much I belong to places that I have never set foot in.
What this proves, beyond all doubt, is the inexplicable — and often healing — power of spaces we encounter in fiction that fill the voids left behind by the ones we inhabit in real life. These are virgin lands full of unbridled potential and promise, generously lending themselves to the stories, and people they bring alive. They feel wholesome, safe, and welcoming enough to seek refuge in. As for me, I am just thankful to have been chosen by a town as benevolent as the one in Call Me By Your Name — my sanctum through the past years.
So there, you know now where to find me every time I go under the radar, away from the petty nothings plaguing my banal existence. If only I never had to leave.
— Images courtesy: Screenshots via Netflix
Read more from What's in a Setting series here.
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