PARK CITY, Utah — I’m taking a stance on this: “Call Me by Your Name” is 2017’s gay drama of the year, and it’s as ripe for awards as the peaches that grow in the film’s rambling Italian orchards. If it ends up with heavy-hitting competitors, all the better — but this swooningly lovely film from director Luca Guadagnino (“I Am Love”) is going to be tough to beat. I’d call it the next “Moonlight” or “Brokeback Mountain,” but that would entirely belie its entrancing and — really, could it be? — mostly upbeat tone.
Set, as the credits specify, “somewhere in Northern Italy” in the early 1980s, attraction flares between Oliver, a graduate student (Armie Hammer), and Elio, the 17-year-old son (Timothée Chalamet) of the professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) with whom Oliver is studying for the summer. Oliver lives with the family in their country house, a dream of an Italian getaway where al fresco dinners run late into the evenings and there are plentiful bikes to ride around the tiny town and through sun-dappled lanes and fields.
The intellectual Oliver is an archetypal American, cocky and athletic; Elio, a more introverted bookworm and musician, tries to disdain their brash houseguest but somehow can’t look away. Sparks build between them, despite Oliver’s admonition that nothing can happen, and despite both having entanglements with local girls. The smolder between these two very physically different (and both very attractive) young men unfolds against the equally dazzling backdrop of the Italian countryside; every shot is another luscious delight.
Oh, and there’s this extensive sequence with a peach. This is the one everyone will be talking about, and it doesn’t disappoint. (Tonally, it’s the exact opposite of that “American Pie” thing, in case you were wondering.) But the majority of this movie is as sensual as the soon-to-be-infamous Peach Scene — until it takes a turn for the sentimental, as Elio’s dad gives him one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard about love, coming out, loss and resilience. It’s not to be missed.