Tag: Timothée Chalamet

A Complete Unknown (2024)

Engaging but traditional biopic, very well-made and full of knock out performances

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (Bob Dylan), Edward Norton (Pete Seeger), Elle Fanning (Sylvie Russo), Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez), Boyd Holbrook (Johnny Cash), Scoot McNairy (Woody Guthrie), Dan Fogler (Albert Grossman), Norbert Leo Butz (Alan Lomax), PJ Byrne (Harold Leventhal), Will Harrison (Bob Neuwirth), Eriko Hatsune (Toshi Seeger), Charlie Tahan (Al Kooper)

In 1961 Bob Dylan seemed to emerge from nowhere – or, if you like, from being A Complete Unknown – to become the big star of American music and the centre of a battle for the soul of American folk music. On one side, were the traditionalists – they loved Dylan’s thoughtful, lyrical ballads and use of guitar, harpsichord and other instruments. They believed Dylan could lead a whole new generation to traditional American music. On the other side were the modernists, inspired by rock and roll, and the new (electric) sound. A Complete Unknown is about Dylan’s – inevitable – journey towards exploring new music sounds, culminating in his strum-heard-around-the-world as he played an electric set at the Newport Folk Festival (to a mixed reaction to say the least).

That’s the meat of James Mangold’s traditional, but very well-made and enjoyable musical biography, a spiritual sequel to Walk the Line (with a decent, but drink-addled Cash here played by Boyd Holbrook). Much like that film, this tweaks and amends some historical facts, but manages to get close to the spirit of its subject all within a familiar biography set-up of early success, mid-way struggles and triumphant (of a sort) resolution. There is nothing in A Complete Unknown to surprise you but it’s still a highly enjoyable, very professionally assembled journey.

Its main success is the depth and insight with which it penetrates Dylan’s character. A Complete Unknown embraces Dylan’s enigmatic quality, not to mention his stubborn, relentless and obsessive focus on his music and the austere distance he can treat the world. This all comes across beautifully in Timothée Chalamet’s superb performance – not only a pin-point physical and vocal and impersonation, but also a soulful rendering of a poet who constantly pushed against being classified and categorised, bristling against ideas he should play certain songs certain ways.

The roots of the culture clash that will dominate the film are clear from the start when Dylan and Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) drive from visiting visited Dylan’s hospitalised idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and Dylan flicks through radio channels. Dylan finds interest in all the different music they encounter; Seeger smiles pleasantly and nods his head, but clearly can’t hide his patient disregard for the electric beats of rock and roll. It’s the platform for the surly discontent Chalamet so perfectly embodies as Dylan is expected to pigeon hole himself as a folk singer, who (as he puts it) stands with his acoustic guitar at a mic and sings Blowin’ In the Wind for the rest of his life. A Complete Unknown falls in love with Dylan’s passionate self-expression, his search for his own sound.

That search frequently makes Dylan a difficult person to spend time with. Awkward and hesitant with other people – Chalamet’s Dylan is constantly cautious about exposing too much of his inner thoughts and feelings – the poetic writer mumbles in monosyllables and responds to fame with a grudging disdain that seems him rarely remove his sunglass shield between him and the world. He has no interest in fame and is positively alarmed at adulation from strangers (there is a neat line when he is unrecognised by a street vendor and asked if he has kids to which he wearily replies ‘Yeah, thousands’). Match that with his ruthless determination to put his artistic calling above anything else, and you’ve got a man who verges on using other people.

It feeds into Dylan’s relationships. At his request, his girlfriend Suzie Rotolo is very-lightly disguised as Sylvie Russo, played with an emotional richness by Elle Fanning. The film skips the more difficult parts of their break-up – Dylan stated the only song he regrated was one he wrote about Rotolo’s abortion, calling himself a shmuck for doing so. But in doing so, the film steams off Rotolo’s contribution to Dylan’s writing and much of her own dynamic and interesting qualities. The original Rotolo, an artist, was an important sounding board: we don’t see a jot of that here, as she is repackaged into offering Dylan much-needed stability and security, dealing with movie-girlfriend insecurity about Dylan’s attraction to collaborator Joan Baez.

Dylan returns to Russo when he needs comfort at times of stress (from dropping in on her apartment – and waking her new boyfriend – late at night, to bringing her with him to the folk festival when he intends to turn electric) but Chalamet’s simmering self-focus makes clear Dylan at this stage can’t settle into a mutual relationship. It also comes between him and Joan Baez, played with dynamic charisma by Monica Barbaro, Despite their attraction and musical synchronicity, Dylan never sees her as a true artistic partner, even calling round one night for a booty call followed by private song writing using her guitar (she throws him out). On tour together, Dylan archly points out he writes the song and he leaves Baez hanging at a concert when he flat-out refuses to play the advertised favourites. The chemistry however is still there, within when it tips into aggression.

Dylan goes his own way, and if that means turning against surrogate fathers Peter Seeger and Woody Guthrie, then he will. A Complete Unknown features one of Edward Norton’s finest performances as a warm, tender and heartbreaking Pete Seeger (matched with a wonderful performance from Eriko Hatsune as Pete’s wife Toshi). Norton is brilliant at making Seeger – an environmentalist and gentle, accommodating advocate of folk music – a portrait of inevitable disappointment-in-waiting. There is a heart-rending moment where Norton beams as if all his dreams have come true as Dylan plays his first Newport festival: heart-breaking because we know Dylan’s next performance (where a guilty Dylan brusquely shrugs off Seeger’s gentle pleading to stay acoustic for just one more day) will see these dreams left in shattered pieces.

A Complete Unknown is a handsome, very well-mounted film from James Mangold, who has proved time-and-again that he can explore classic Americana with a freshness and energy few other directors can match. The film is perhaps overlong – probably due to the innumerable recreations of performances from Dylan, Seeger and Baez, all excellent but there are far too many – and it’s biopic approach is relentless traditional. But it’s filled with a parade of rich performances (with Chalamet outstanding), rolls along with energy, carries an emotional impact and will leave you engaged and entertained throughout.

Dune: Part 2 (2024)

Villeneuve’s triumphant sequel continues to raise the bar for science fiction films

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (Paul ‘Muad-Dib’ Atreides), Zendaya (Chani), Rebecca Ferguson (Lady Jessica), Javier Bardem (Stilgar), Josh Brolin (Gurney Halleck), Austin Butler (Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen), Florence Pugh (Princess Irulan), Dave Bautista (Rabban Harkonnen), Christopher Walken (Emperor Shaddam IV), Léa Seydoux (Lady Margot Fenring), Souheila Yacoub (Shishakli), Stellan Skarsgård (Baron Vladimir Harkonnen), Charlotte Rampling (Gaius Helen Mohaim)

Denis Villeneuve had already taken on the near-impossible in adapting the unfilmable Dune into a smash-hit admired by both book-fans and initiates. In doing so he set himself an even greater task: how do you follow that? Dune Part 2 (and this is very much Part 2, picking up minutes after the previous film ended) deepens some of the universe building, but also veers the story off into complex, challenging directions that fly in the face of those expecting the sort of “hero will rise” narrative the first Dune seemed to promise. Dune Part 2 becomes an unsettling exploration of faith, colonialism and cultural manipulation, all wrapped up in its epic design.

Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) have escaped the clutches of their rivals House Harkonnen and it’s corrupt, sadistic leader Baron Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgård). Escaping into the deserts of Arrakis, they take shelter with the Fremen, vouched for by tribal leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem). It transpires Paul fits many of the conditions of the prophecy of the Mahdi or Lisan al Gaib, the promised messiah of the Fremen. Paul is uncomfortable with this – and the growing devotion of the likes of Stilgar – but also recognises the potential this has for marshalling the Fremen for his own revenge on the Harkonnen’s. Its further complicated by his knowledge the prophecy was embedded into their culture by the mysterious Bene Gesseri, the religious order that quietly controls much of the Empire, not to mention the hostility of Chani (Zendaya) the woman he loves, as she believes the Fremen should save themselves not rely on an outsider.

These complex ideas eventually shape a film that avoids simple good-vs-evil narratives and subtly undermines the very concept of the saviour narrative. Dune’s roots in a mix of Lord of the Rings and Lawrence of Arabia have rarely been clearer. Not least in the perfect casting of the slightly androgenous and fey Timothée Chalamet as Paul (with more than a hint of Peter O’Toole), barely knowing who he is, drawn towards and standing outside an indigenous community based on strong tribal loyalty, tradition and the grim reality of life in a hostile environment.

A large part of Dune 2 deconstructs Paul’s heroism and his (and Jessica’s) motives. When Jessica – who takes on a religious figurehead role with the Fremen – starts stage-managing events to exactly match the words of the prophecy, does that count as a fulfilment? Paul is deeply uncomfortable with positioning himself as messianic figure for an entire race, effectively weaponising their belief for his own cause. But he’s also nervous because he is also an exceptionally gifted person with powers of persuasion and prophetic insight that mark him out as special. As Paul allows himself to more-and-more accept the role he has been groomed for, how much does it corrupt him? After all, he gains absolute power over the Fremen – and we all know what that does to someone…

Paul’s messianic possibility is also spread on very fertile ground. Javier Bardem’s Stilgar represents a large portion of the Fremen population, who belief in this prophecy with a fanatical certainty. The dangers of this is subtly teased out by Villeneuve throughout the film. At first there is a Life of Brian comedy about Stilgar’s wide-eyed joy as every single event can be twisted and filtered through his naïve messiah check-list (“As is written!”) – even Paul’s denial he is the messiah is met with the response that only a messiah would be so humble! This comedy however fades as the film progresses and the militaristic demands Paul makes sees this same belief channelled into ferocious, fanatic fury that will leave a whole universe burning in its wake.

Much of Paul’s hesitancy is based on his visions of a blood-soaked jihad that will follow if he indeed “heads south” and accepts the leadership of the Fremen’s fanatical majority. The question is, of course, whether the desire for revenge – and, it becomes increasingly clear, a lust for power and control – will overcome such scruples. Part of the skill of Chalamet’s performance is that it is never easy to say precisely when your sympathy for him begins to tip into horror at how far he is willing to go (Villeneuve bookends the film with different victorious armies incinerating mountains of corpses of fallen foes), but in carefully calculated increments the Paul we end up at the end of the film is a world away from the one we encountered at the start.

Villeneuve further comments on this by the skilful re-imagining of Chadi, strongly played by Zendaya as an intelligent, determined freedom-fighter appalled at the Fremen exchanging one dogma for another. In the novel a more passive, devoted warrior-lover of Paul, in Dune Part 2 she becomes effectively his Fremen conscious, a living representation of the manipulation Paul is carrying out on these people. In her continued rejection of worship – even while she remains personally drawn to Paul – she provides a human counterpoint to Paul’s temptation to follow his father’s instructions and master “desert power” to control the worlds around them.

Deplorable and evil as the Harkonnen’s are, do Paul’s ends justify his means? And where does it stop? Dune Part 2 sees the Harkonnen’s subtly reduced in status. Dave Batista’s brooding Raban proves an incompetent manager of Arrakis. Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron is crippled by an assassination attempt and increasingly buffeted by events rather than controlling them. The film’s clearest antagonist becomes Austin Butler’s chillingly psychopathic junior Baron Feyd-Rautha, a muscle-packed bald albino, obsessed with honour and utterly ruthless towards his own subordinates. (Introduced in a stunningly shot, black-and-white gladiatorial combat scene that showcases his insane recklessness and twisted sense of honour.) But increasingly they feel like minor pawns in a game of international politics around them.

Villeneuve allows Dune’s world to expand, delving further into the cultural manipulations of the Bene Gesserit. This ancient order not only controls the Emperor – a broodingly impotent Christopher Walken – but also manipulates the bloodlines of great houses for their own twisted breeding programme, as well as inject cultures like the Fremen with perverted, controlling beliefs. While Villeneuve still carefully parses out the world-building of Dune – you could be forgiven for not understanding why the Spice on Arrakis is so damn important – it’s a film that skilfully outlines in broad strokes a whole universe of backstairs manipulation.

Among all this of course, Dune remains a design triumph. Grieg Fraser’s cinematography ensures the desert hasn’t looked this beautiful since Lawrence. The production and costume design are a triumph, as is Hans Zimmer’s imposing score. Above all, the film is brilliantly paced (wonderfully edited by Greg Walker) and superbly balanced into a mix of complex political theory and enough action and giant worm-riding to keep you more than entertained.

Dune Part 2 is a rich and worthy sequel, broadening and deepening the original, as well as challenging hero narratives. It turns Paul into an increasingly dark and manipulative figure, whose righteous anger is only a few degrees away from just anger (he’s no Luke Skywalker), who starts to see people as tools and moves swiftly from asserting Fremen rights to asserting his own rights (overloaded with different names, its striking when Paul chooses to use which names). In a film that provokes thoughts and thrills, Villeneuve’s Dune continues to do for fantasy-sci-fi what Lord of the Rings did for fantasy, creating a cinematic adaptation unlikely to be rivalled for decades.

Wonka (2023)

Charming but light confection that repackages Wonka into a Paddington type figure

Director: Paul King

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (Willy Wonka), Calah Lane (Noodle), Keegan Michael-Key (Chief of Police), Paterson Joseph (Arthur Slugworth), Matt Lucas (Gerald Prodnose), Mathew Baynton (Felix Fickelgruber), Sally Hawkins (Mrs Wonka), Rowan Atkinson (Father Julius), Jim Carter (Abacus Crunch), Natasha Rothwell (Piper Benz), Olivia Colman (Mrs Scrubit), Hugh Grant (Lofty), Rich Fulcher (Larry Chucklesworth), Rakhee Thakrar (Lottie Bell), Tom Davis (Bleacher)

What did Willy Wonka do, before the factory and the carefully stuffed golden tickets in selected chocolate bars? According to Paul King’s amusingly light confection of a film, he was just a guy with a sweet box and a dream, befuddled by the big city. A bright-eyed, naïve young man, Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) is swiftly bested by the Chocolate Cartel and conned into a life of servitude by his landlady Mrs Scrubit (Olivia Colman), after not reading the contract small print. But Wonka’s invention, good cheer and alliance with put-upon fellow Scrubit victim, orphan Noodle (Calah Lane), sees him turn adversity into cartel-smashing triumph.

It might be clear from that paragraph that the Willy Wonka of this film bears very little resemblance to the figure from the Dahl original who happily allows children to face dangerous punishments in his factory. King’s film has some flourishes of Dahl in its character names and eccentricities but, in terms of tone, it takes far more after his successful Paddington films than anything Dahl wrote. Wonka himself, in his accident-prone naivety, decency and fundamental sense of fair-play, is certainly a figure in the shadow of Peru’s most beloved bear, with the film swiftly also giving him a version of Paddington’s eccentric surrogate family and increasingly comic traps to get out of.

Wonka isn’t really Dahl and doesn’t bother to begin to explore how on earth the man we see here might become the character from the books. Does that really matter? I suppose not. I guess you need to judge each film on its merits, and while the Dahl purists are unlikely to consider this fitting for the great storyteller, I’d point them instead towards Wes Anderson’s gorgeous short films, which are a true blast of Dahlish delight.

Wonka instead is a sweet, bouncy, family-friendly musical with a hero designed to appeal to all ages, carefully set in a non-descript European-ish location that combines elements of multiple cities, regions and periods (so much is the film a higgledy-piggledy fantasia combination of places, all enhanced with CGI, that it’s a surprise to see Oxford’s Radcliffe Camera appear in the film’s conclusion unadjusted and intact). It’s packed with songs – which, if I’m being honest, are mostly clever and decent than catchy or memorable – and is set in a world where corrupt monks and police detectives will bend any rules for another chocolate fix.

At the heart of all this, Timothée Chalamet gives a sprightly and engaging performance. Chalamet dials up the eccentricity of Wonka, creating a character that is whimsical but caring, an innocent abroad who just can’t understand why people would be cruel or lie. Chalamet throws himself into some effective singing and dancing, and generally lands the role pretty much in the sweet spot between sickly sweet and deliciously more-ish. It helps a great deal that he develops a brilliant sibling chemistry with Calah Lane, who is street-smart and a lot of fun as an orphan whom the world has taught to be cunning and creative.

King crafts a number of set-pieces that fit this revisioning of Wonka as a song-and-dance man at the heart of an Arthur Freed-style musical. There is a fine word-play packed song (as Wonka searches for effective rhymes for Noodle) in a giraffe pen, a balloon-carried number in the skies and, best of all, a very funny work song sung by those poor unfortunates conned by Mrs Scrubit into a lifetime of debt. This surrogate family, by the way, is a neat illustration of King and co-writer Simon Farnaby’s trick of turning potential one-note characters into people you care for, ably embodied by Jim Carter as a stuffy accountant, Natasha Rothwell as a bouncy seamstress, Rakhee Thakrar as a nervous telephonist and Rich Fulcher as a past-his-best comedian.

Much like his Paddington films, Wonka takes place in a world of minimal threat. The villains are largely comic – Olivia Colman surely will spend most of the next few years duelling with Helena Bonham Carter to land toothy, sweaty grotesques roles like Mrs Scrubit – with the Chocolate Cartel in particular making a droll collection of smugly superior types, ably played by Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas and Matthew Baynton. Their operations take place in a surreally complex underground base (under a cathedral guarded by chocolate-obsessed monks naturally), built around a vault full of liquid chocolate. Following the structure of both Paddington films, naturally this becomes the site of an act four heist by our heroes.

Wonka frequently feels a little too often like it is simply repeating and representing stuff that had worked well for King and Farnaby in the past. (You also feel that about the casting of Hugh Grant as an Oompa-Loompa – fundamentally that is the joke, although Grant delivers it repeatedly marvellously.) While few people do this sort of thing better than them, you feel Wonka offered the chance to be something more rather than a spiritual retread of the superior Paddington films.

It’s a film that never quite finds it own identity, or really finds a Dahlish uniqueness. It settles, happily, for being a feel-good confection, a charming series of scenes and songs delivered with just the right level of enthusiasm and glee by a cast who look like they are having a marvellous time. It’s charming enough and I enjoyed it, but I can’t say I loved it like I do Paddington 2. I can’t help but feel that’s because the emotional connection isn’t there. Wonka himself, repackaged as he is, is a little too odd to be as adorable as the Bear, and without really, deeply, caring for Wonka the film itself doesn’t carry the impact it should. It’s entertaining, but it didn’t win a place in my heart.

Don’t Look Up (2021)

A host of stars tell us the world us coming to an end in this self-satisfied film

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Dr Randall Mindy), Jennifer Lawrence (Kate Diabiasky), Rob Morgan (Dr Teddy Oglethorpe), Meryl Streep (President Janie Orlean), Cate Blanchett (Brie Evantree), Jonah Hill (Jason Orlean), Mark Rylance (Peter Isherwell), Tyler Perry (Jack Bremmer), Timothée Chalamet (Yule), Ron Perlman (Colonel Benedict Drask), Ariana Grande (Riley Bina), Scott Mescudi (DJ Chello), Himesh Patel (Philip Kaj), Melanie Lynsky (June Mindy), Michael Chiklis (Dan Pawketty)

Climate Change. It’s the impending disaster where we stick our head in the sand and pretend it’s not incoming. Governments have been told for decades our carefree use of fossil fuels and slicing down of rainforests will have a cataclysmic impact. But it’s always easiest for governments and people to just say “nah” and not let those thoughts get in the way of our everyday lives. Adam McKay’s satire Don’t Look Now takes these trends of indifference, disbelief and denial climate scientists have faced their whole careers and reapplies them to a comet-hits-the-Earth disaster movie.

So, when Michigan State University astronomers Dr Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate Diabiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) spot a hunk of ruck the size of Everest on a collision course with the Earth they are met with a chorus of… yawns, memes and flat-out denials. The Trumpian President (Meryl Streep) is only interested in her donors, the mid-terms and dodging the fall-out from a host of scandals. The media – represented by Fox News style anchors Brie Evantree (Cate Blanchett) and Jack Bremmer (Tyler Perry) – aren’t interested in a story they can’t process down into a feel-good social media meme. And even when people start to listen, plans to destroy the comet are benched in favour of a wildly risky scheme, dreamed up by Steve Jobs/Elon Musk style tech billionaire Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) to mine the rare ores it contains for money. What could go wrong?

I can see what Adam McKay is aiming for here, to create a sort of Dr Strangelove for climate change, where the great and the good we are counting on to get us through a crisis, turn out to be the blinkered morons who end up causing it. There are moments where it sort-of hits on a rich mixture of farce and genuine anger. Moments where first Kate then Mindy – thelatter with lashings of Howard Beale – melt down on National TV, apoplectic at the comet-denying indifference of millions of people stand out as both hilarious and also compelling.

But, like a lot of McKay’s would-be satirical attacks over the last year, on finance and politics, the message sometimes fails to land because of the heavy-handed, self-satisfied, smug tone of the delivery. Don’t Look Up frequently isn’t very funny – and yes I know it ends with the world being destroyed due to everyone’s indifference and incompetence – and it ladles most of the blame on obvious targets. It’s takedown of Trump – here represented by Meryl Streep – is basic, it hits open goals with the agenda-driven bias of American news reporters and takes pot-shots at messianic tech billionaires. A real punch would perhaps have focused in more on how all the mindless, unfocused greed and ambition of these people is fed by the bland, social media focused, sound-bite obsessed shallowness of the masses. But Don’t Look Up remains focused on the big people.

So focused in fact that, even in this satire, only America has the wherewithal to launch a mission against the comet. A joint Russian, Chinese and Indian mission fails to get off the ground and other world leaders are noticeable by their absence. We never really spend time with any normal people. While much of the blame does lie with governments not taking a lead, we do live in a world where normal people are radicalised by reading about nonsensical mush like QAnon through chat rooms. Imagine a satire that looked at how ordinary people can be made to believe wild theories rather than the evidence of their own eyes as a comet heads towards Earth? Instead Don’t Look Up wants to stick with something vaguely comforting – that there are big, selfish, elites running us who act out of greed and stupidity and they carry all the danger (and the blame).

Where the film is strongest is the doubt and nonsense thrown at scientists. Mindy and Diabasky are first ignored by the administration because they aren’t Ivy League. Attempting to leak their findings on the TV, they are overshadowed by an on-air-proposal of a celebrity DJ to his singer girlfriend and when they hit the news, the only takeaway is that Mindy is ‘cute’, while Diabasky is a freaky angry woman, ranting about the world ending (she’s a meme in minutes). At every point the science is questioned or put on the same level as gut feelings and political agendas. Even their campaign to encourage the world to “Just Look Up” to see the impending catastrophe is countered by the President’s “Don’t Look Up” campaign that persuades millions of people the comet isn’t real.

Really rule by social media and the dumbing down of humanity should be the main target here. A comet isn’t even a great metaphor for climate change – which is gradual, can’t be just blown up and needs to be prevented by society making changes to the way we live. In some ways, by replacing climate change with a comet, even the film is acknowledging its not sexy or exciting enough – and that it doesn’t want to turn its critical fire on millions of people who would rather turn the heating up or drive to the corner shop rather than push to make changes in their lives.

So, it’s easier and simple for McKay to create a cartoon freak show of easy targets and bash them rather than tackle the underlying causes of climate change – that our world and its population wants to have its cake and eat it, and governments for generations have been too focused on the here and now to ever worry about the years to come. So funny as it can be to see Streep Trump it up, or Rylance channel his softness into insanity, or Hill play another of his mindless frat boys turned power brokers, the film doesn’t feel like it really goes for the real causes of climate change: our own culture. It takes hits at our social media simpleness, but not at our short sightedness.

McKay does at least direct without much of the fourth-wall leaning flashiness of his earlier works, and there are committed – if not exactly stretching – performances from Lawrence (whose characters checks out in despair at the shallowness) and DiCaprio (who is seduced by fame, power and Blanchett into becoming an apologetic mouthpiece for the administration). But Don’t Look Up is a little too pleased with itself, a little too focused on easy targets and doesn’t do enough to spread the blame wider. It stills see many of us as victims or mislead – when really we are as to blame a everyone else.

Dune (2021)

Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson excel in Denis Villeneuve’s marvellous Dune

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (Paul Atreides), Rebecca Ferguson (Lady Jessica), Oscar Isaac (Duke Leto Atreides), Josh Brolin (Gurney Halleck), Stellan Skarsgard (Baron Valdimir Harkonnen), Dave Bautista (Glossu Rabban), Charlotte Rampling (Gaius Helen Mohiam), Jason Momoa (Duncan Idaho), Javier Bardem (Stilgar), Stephen McKinley Henderson (Thufir Hawat), Zendaya (Chani), Sharon Duncan-Brewster (Dr Liet-Kynes), David Dastmalchian (Piter De Vries), Chang Chen (Dr Wellington Yueh)

In the history of “unfilmable novels”, few are perhaps as “unfilmable” as Frank Herbert’s epic science-fiction novel Dune. In fact, in case we were in any doubt, we even have the evidence with David Lynch’s curiosity Dune (either a noble attempt or an egregious mess, depending on who you talk to – I fall between the two camps depending on the time of day). Denis Villeneuve – fresh from his glorious reinvention of Blade Runner – is one of the few directors with the vision and the clout needed to bring this fictional universe to the screen. He delivers a visually stunning slice of cinematic story-telling, that remains faithful to the novel while carefully calculating how much of the story to focus on. It makes for a sweeping, spectacular film.

The set-up in Herbert’s books is labyrinthine, but one of the film’s great skills is to boil it down to something digestible and understandable. It helps as well that, unlike Lynch’s film, this focuses on roughly the first half of the novel only. 10,000 years in the future, mankind travels through space – but space travel is dependent on a spice that can only be mined on a sand-covered planet called Arrakis, populated by colossal worms and a race of mysterious sand-dwellers called the Fremen. Control of the mining operation of the planet is taken from the brutal House Harkonnen, and its patriarch (Stellan Skarsgard), and granted to the more moderate House Atreides and its head Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac). However, this is just a ruse to trap and destroy House Atreides, whose popularity endangers the Emperor. On arrival on the planet, Leto’s son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) is believed by the Fremen to be a long-promised messiah – and Paul is plagued with strange visions of his future. Can he, and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), survive and fulfil their destinies?

Dune is a complex, sprawling piece of world-building – the sort of book so stuffed with unique words, concepts and language that it includes a full glossary to help the reader work out what’s going on. Villeneuve’s genius here is to work out exactly how much of that world building to build into the script, and how much to leave out. Where the Lynch Dune tried to cover everything in this universe and seemed to introduce new characters and concepts in every scene (right up to the end), Villeneuve’s Dune is far more focused. It gives enough tips of the hat to readers of the book to be faithful, but doesn’t bother the more casual viewer with what, say, a mentat is or who the Space Guild exactly are. The overload of information that crushed Lynch’s Dune is skilfully avoided here.

What we get instead is a wonderfully focused, coming-of-age story that places the young hero front-and-centre – and filters our experience through his eyes. This not only helps give us a very clear human engagement with this world, it also makes for a highly relatable central arc to build the rest of the world building around. After all, we understand the “chosen-one-finds-his-destiny” story: using that as a very clear framework, allows the wider universe to be slowly and carefully drip-fed around that. It also plays very well to the reader (who will know the unspoken detail and enjoy subtle references to it on screen) and to the initiate (who won’t need to know every last detail of every last character’s background and won’t be overwhelmed by those references).

On top of which, Dune is, in itself, a sumptuous and visually beautiful example of expansive world-building. Fitting a series that has spawned dozens of novels and an entire universe of expanded storylines, endless care and loving attention has gone into creating every inch of this world. Jacqueline West’s costumes brilliantly capture the mix of medieval and space-punk futurism in the world’s design (this is after all a universe which is effectively Game of Thrones in space – one of many franchises to owe a huge debt to Dune) and Patrice Vermette’s set design superbly contrasts the different planets aesthetics. The imagery carefully contrasts the greens and blues (and water!) of the other worlds with the striking yellows and dryness of Arrakis – it’s beautifully filmed by Grieg Fraser – and the scale is epic, re-enforced by Zimmer’s gothic choir inspired music.

Villeneuve marshals this all into a story that is part world-building set-up, part conspiracy thriller and eventually becomes a full-on chase movie. Each shift in story-telling style flows naturally into the next, and Villeneuve keeps the pace and sense of intrigue up highly effectively. He also understands that films like this need a touch of wit and human warmth: Herbert’s book, for all its strengths, is also a po-faced and slightly pretentious read, with every event and character consciously carrying a massive sense of importance. Dune recognises this, and makes sure to mix lightness and touches of humour to avoid the operatic seriousness tipping into being a little silly (as it did in Lynch’s version).

Villeneuve is helped in this by a well-chosen cast. Chalamet is perfectly cast as the naïve Paul, growing in statue and wisdom as the film progresses: he is effectively vulnerable but also a determined and mentally strong hero, one we can have faith in but still feel concerned about. Ferguson is the film’s stand-out performance as his conflicted mother, determined to protect her family. Isaac is perfect as the charismatic and noble Leto, as is Skarsgard as the viciously bloated Vladimir. Sharon Duncan-Brewster is terrific as an official with split loyalties. Charlotte Rampling has a highly effective cameo as a mysterious priest while Jason Momoa gives possibly his finest performance (certainly his warmest and wittiest) as a larger-than-life warrior.

The film glosses over certain elements – in particular the plot against House Artreides, and Leto’s suspicions of it are wisely simplified and stream-lined – and wisely revises or avoids elements of the book that have dated (most notably the slight stench of homophobia around the bloated, predatory Vladimir). In some ways it’s a beautiful coffee-table version of the story, but it’s careful enough to suggest anything we are not seeing from the book is still happening, just off-camera (I await the inevitable Director’s Cut with even more Mentats, Conditioning and Weirding!). However – based on the cinema I sat in – this has worked a treat to win converts over to the story.

A sweeping, impressive and epic version of a huge novel, it’s a triumph of directorial vision and skilful compression and adaptation. By trying to make Dune work for a larger audience, without sacrificing its heart, rather than laboriously include everything and everyone, it successfully makes it into a crowd-pleasing space opera with depth. Catch it on the big screen!

Little Women (2019)

March Sisters: Assemble! For Greta Gerwig’s superlative adaptation of Little Women

Director: Greta Gerwig

Cast: Saoirse Ronan (Jo March), Emma Watson (Meg March), Florence Pugh (Amy March), Eliza Scanlen (Beth March), Laura Dern (Marmee March), Timothée Chalamet (Laurie), Meryl Streep (Aunt March), Tracy Letts (Mr Dashwood), Bob Odenkirk (Father March), James Norton (John Brooke), Louis Garrel (Professor Friedrich Bhaer), Chris Cooper (Mr Laurence)

Spoilers: Such as they are but discussion of the film’s ending (or rather Greta Gerwig’s interpretation of it) can be found herein…

There are few novels as well beloved as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. So much so – and so successful have been the numerable adaptations, not least Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 version – that it’s hard to see what a new adaptation could bring to the story that hasn’t been covered before. A new window on the story is triumphantly found though in Greta Gerwig’s fresh and vibrant adaptation, blessed with some terrific performances, and telling its own very distinctive version of the story.

Gerwig’s version crucially starts off in the sisters’ adult lives: Jo (Saoirse Ronan) in New York struggling to make it as a writer, while Meg (Emma Watson) nurses the ill Beth (Eliza Scanlon) back home with Marmee (Laura Dern), and Amy (Florence Pugh) encounters their childhood friend Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) in Paris. This is intercut with the story of their growing up in Massachusetts, with the past story line eventually catching up with the present day.

If that sounds like it should make the story hard to follow, don’t worry – this is astonishingly confident work from Gerwig, wonderfully directed with zest, fire and imagination (making her exclusion from the Best Director list at the Oscars even more inexplicable – chalk that up I guess to sexism against pictures about “girls” and the fact it’s not as overtly flashy as the rest of this year’s nominees). This takes a familiar book, and fires it up with all the energy of independent, modern cinema, creating something that feels hugely fresh and dynamic. The cross cutting between the two timelines work beautifully – not only is it always perfectly clear, but it also makes for some wonderful contrasts between events in the past and present. None less than the recovery of Beth from TB being followed (with an almost shot-by-shot echo in its filming) by the reactions to Beth’s death. Inventions like this add even greater depth and meaning to the moments and hammer home some terrific emotional high points.

Gerwig’s style throughout the film invests the story with a great energy, particularly in creating the warm bohemian attitude of the March family. This really feels like a family – conversations between them are fast, people talk relaxedly over each other, the chemistry is completely real, and the camera captures in its movement the warmth and energy of these characters who are completely comfortable in each other’s presence. It’s no surprise that Laurie is taken so quickly with this family, or wants to be part of it. Gerwig invests the family with a dynamic, excited sense of freedom and urgency. Helped by the warm glow that the childhood sections of the film are shot with, these scenes hum with a glorious sense of familial warmth and excitement.

The camera often moves with careful, but perfectly planned, movement through scenes, mixed in with moments of fast movement – following Jo through streets, or the playful exuberance of Jo and Laurie’s first meeting (and dance) at a society ball. It’s a vibe that carries across to the performances, anchored by Saoirse Ronan’s fabulous performance as Jo. Fervent, intelligent, idealistic but also stubborn, prickly and difficult, Ronan’s Jo carries large chunks of the film, with the character skilfully mixed in with elements of Louisa May Alcott. Ronan most impressively suggests a warmth and familial love for Laurie at all times, that never (on her side) tips into a real romantic feeling. She also has superb chemistry in any case with the excellent Timothée Chalamet, who is just about perfect as a dreamy, but quietly conventional in his way, Laurie.

Gerwig’s primary rejig – and a reflection of the new structure she is chosen – is to allow more screen time to Amy, usually the least popular of the four sisters. She’s also helped by a sensational performance by the Oscar-nominated Florence Pugh as Amy, who not only plays a character perfectly from her mid-teens to her early twenties, but also invests the character with huge amounts of light and shade. The film gives a great deal of time to Amy’s time in Paris – her frustration with living in Jo’s shadow, her longing for her own artistic career (and recognition of her conventional talent – brilliantly established by a wordless glance Pugh gives an impressionist painting compared to her own literal effort) and her own romantic feelings and dreams. Cross cutting this with her past actions – her more temperamental and less sympathetic moments (burning Jo’s book!) that have pained generations – gives the audience far more sympathy and understanding for her. Pugh is also pretty much flawless in the film.

There are a host of superb performances though, with Watson capturing the duller sense of conventional duty in Meg, but spicing it with a sad regret for chances lost; Laura Dern is wonderfully warm as Marmee, but mixes in a loneliness and isolation below the surface; Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep sparkle in cameos. There is barely a false step in the case.

All the action eventually boils towards the ending – and Gerwig’s bravest and most unconventional decisions, in subtly adjusting the final conclusion of the story. At first it seems that the cross cutting of the story has short changed heavily the Bhaer-Jo relationship (Bhaer appears only in the first half an hour of the film and the end), as it cannot lean too heavily on romance when many in the audience will still be expecting a Jo-Laurie match up.

But Gerwig actually uses this as a skilful deconstruction of the novel. Always feeling that Alcott desired Jo to be a single author – but inserted the marriage to Bhaer at the end to help sell the book – Gerwig effectively has Jo do the same thing. At a crucial moment in the final scenes, we cut to Jo negotiating with her publisher (a droll cameo by Tracey Letts), who insists on a happy ending. Cue a “movie style” chase to intercept a departing Bhaer (shot with the golden hue of the past, while Jo’s meeting with the publisher has the colder colours of the present). Our final shot shows Jo watching her book being printed, cross cut with a golden hued vision of “Jo’s” school with husband in tow.

It’s a genius little touch, as it’s subtle enough to allow viewers to take the happy ending as it appears in the surface, but smart and clever enough to make the movie unique and different from the other versions (and that ending from the 1994 version is hard to top!). It may undermine the final relationship – and offend those who like the idea of Jo deciding she wants something different than she at first thought – but in its freshness it can’t be challenged. It also makes for a film from Gerwig that is both fresh and exciting and also bracingly and thrillingly in love with Alcott and her work.

The King (2019)

Timothée Chalamet is the war like Henry V in the confused The King

Director: David Michôd

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (King Henry V), Joel Edgerton (Sir John Falstaff), Robert Pattinson (The Dauphin), Sean Harris (William Gascoigne), Thomasin McKenzie (Queen Phillippa), Ben Mendelsohn (Henry IV), Tom Glynn-Carney (Henry “Hotspur” Percy), Lily-Rose Depp (Princess Catherine), Dean-Charles Chapman (Thomas, Duke of Clarence), Thibault de Montalembert (King Charles VI), Tara Fitzgerald (Hooper), Andrew Havill (Archbishop of Canterbury)

This is a story that is pretty familiar to most people now – after all, Shakespeare’s play has probably been being played somewhere in the world for most of the last 500 years. Edgerton and Michôd collaborated on the story and script of this restaging, or reimagining, of Shakespeare’s epic of the wayward fun-loving prince turned hardened warrior king. Despite being handsomely filmed, and impressively shot, this makes for an odd and unusual film which falls between the two stools, as it is faithful to neither history nor the Shakespeare original.

The rough concept remains the same. Prince Hal (Timothée Chalamet) is not just a young man who has fun in the taverns of London, he’s also quite forward looking in his attitudes, and just can’t understand why he should be made to carry on the rivalries of his father, the fearsome Henry IV (a broodingly miffed Ben Mendelsohn) or why he should continue the wars that the council pressures him into. When he becomes king, however, Henry is persuaded by his counsellor William Gascoigne (Sean Harris), that the path to peace for the realm – and safety for his subjects – can only be through unifying the kingdom by war with France. Appointing the only man he trusts – his old drinking companion and famed soldier Sir John Falstaff (Joel Edgerton) – as the Marshal of his armies, Henry heads to France where destiny awaits.

Michôd’s film is at its strongest when it focuses on the visuals and the aesthetic of its age. It’s beautifully shot, with several striking images, from execution courtyards to the battle of Agincourt itself, which takes place in an increasingly grimy field. The battle itself ends up feeling more than a little reminiscent of ideas from Game of Thrones – in fact a few core images are straight rip-offs from the famous “Battle of the Bastards” episode – but it at least looks good, even if there are few things new in it. The costumes and production design don’t feel like they strike a wrong note either with the grimy, lived-in feel.

More of the issues come around the script. The film’s concept of Henry initially as this rather woke modern king – he just wants peace and to give up these tiresome obsessive conflicts of his father – who slowly becomes more colder and ruthless as the film progresses does at least make thematic sense in the film, but it still rings a little untrue. Much as I would like, it’s hard to believe that any prince like this could ever have existed at the time, and so cool and calculating is Chalamet’s performance from the first that he never feels like a genuine, young, naïve princeling whom we can sympathise with early on.

It makes the film’s arc rather cold, and Hal an even more unknowable character than the film perhaps even intends. There is very little warmth or genuine friendship between Hal and Falstaff, and Hal moves so quickly to the imagining (and enacting) of war crimes during his time in France that his descent towards potential tyrant feels far too sharp to carry impact. Even in the early days of his reign he’s swift to have potential destablisers in his court executed with no mercy. Where is the fall, if he is such a cold fish to start with? And with Chalamet at his most restrained (like the royal baggage and the accent are a straight-jacket around him), how can an audience invest in him?

And what are we supposed to be making of this anyway, since the film is at equal pains to suggest that the king may be the subject of manipulation and lies that force his hand into war? This Henry, we learn, values truth and honesty highest – but this doesn’t stop him getting pissed when met with counter-arguments from his advisers (even Falstaff) or reacting with cold fury and disavowal when things don’t go his way. It’s a confusing attempt to add an ill-fitting modern morality to a king who essentially in real life spent most of his life at war, and was to die on campaign in France still trying to cement his rights at a young age.

Edgerton and Michôd’s script fails to really square this circle, and all the attempts to have its cake and eat it (the peace loving king still manages to kick arse, including killing Hotspur in single combat thus averting the Battle of Shrewsbury from ever happening) don’t quite pan out. Edgerton writes himself a decent role as Sir John Falstaff, here reimagined as a million miles from the drunken, cowardly knight into a courageous and hardened soldier who has no time for the compromises and deceit of court (in contrast to Henry’s other advisor, the Machiavellian Gascoigne played with a playful archness by Sean Harris). Making Falstaff a respected figure like this rather flies in the face of the logic of why Henry IV is so annoyed about his son spending time with him, but never mind.

It’s not really Shakespeare and it’s not really history. It sticks closest perhaps to Shakespeare in its portrayal of the French as arrogant fops – led by Robert Pattinson going delightfully OTT as the Dauphin – but it never really quite works out what it wants to be. With its Game of Thrones look and feel, and prince who is both great warrior and reluctant warlord, peace-lover and ruthless executor of his enemies, it feels scattergun and confused rather than coherent and whole.

Lady Bird (2017)

Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalfe are mother and daughter with more in common than they think in Lady Bird

Director: Greta Gerwig

Cast: Saoirse Ronan (Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson), Laurie Metcalfe (Marion McPherson), Tracy Letts (Larry McPherson), Lucas Hedges (Danny O’Neill), Timothée Chalamet (Kyle Scheible), Beanie Feldstein (Julie Steffans), Lois Smith (Sister Sarah Joan), Stephen McKinley Henderson (Father Leviatch)

In Sacramento, California, in 2002 Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is a self-consciously assured teenager, constantly pushing to define herself as new and original, down to giving herself a new name (“Lady Bird”) and playfully enjoys pushing against the limits of what is acceptable at her Catholic school. She however butts heads with her mother Marion (Laurie Metcalfe), a hard-working nurse, supporting the family as her husband Larry (Tracy Letts) is unemployed and out-of-step skills-wise with the jobs market. Mother and daughter though are strikingly similar people, independent minded but with a streak of loving kindness.

It’s the relationship between these two characters that is the heart of Gerwig’s gently made coming-of-age (of a sort) drama. The key scenes that power the film are both the clashes and moments of fun between these two. There are feuds and angry words – but they often sit-by-side with a loving regard and a shared world perspective. Gerwig gets superb performances from both actors, with Ronan every inch the difficult teenager, full of promise but overwhelming with arrogance and mistakes that constantly hurt those around her. Metcalf is equally good as a woman weighed down with cares, who constantly makes time for others – and therefore finds her daughter’s lapses into selfishness all the more infuriating as they fly in the face of everything she values in life.

The film opens with a fight between these two that just seems to capture the moment. After a long drive to a perspective college, they finish an audiobook of The Grapes of Wrath both overcome with emotion from the stories end. Seconds after it finishes, Lady Bird goes to turn the radio on, her mother asks for a moment of reflection – and we are off from a shared emotional experience into a mother-daughter row. Setting the tone of how many of these will go – and the characters they display in the film – Lady Bird impulsively throws herself out of the car when she feels she is unable to come up with a decent comeback to a point. It’s a plaster cast she will wear for a large part of the film – and an example of the impulsive addiction to terrible decisions that seems to be constantly on the edge of ruining her friendships and chances.

A lot of this material is, to be honest, pretty standard stuff for movies of this genre. And Lady Bird herself is at times a rather irritating and even annoying lead character, one who seems to be constantly hurting people around her with very little regard for their feelings and seems to be continually forgiven regardless. Her treatment of her best friend Julie (a fine performance of endearing sweetness by Beanie Feldstein) sees her drop her and then pick her back up again with a suddenness that feels like it has missed the hurt and pain she has caused.

But then other parts work so well because the script approaches them with a quirky eye for a good joke and a sharp line. There are some very fine jokes among the script, a high point being a PE teacher turned drama director who directs his plays in the exact way he would plan out a football game. Little moments of character observation and behavioural ticks often strike home and frequently raise a smile.

But it also carries across the same observational honesty to less savoury attitudes of being a teenager. The selfishness, the feuding. Lady Bird’s sexual awakening of course happens with a self-obsessed arrogant would-be-poet aiming at a higher plane of intelligence (played with an assured arrogance by Timothée Chalamet). Lady Bird’s striving to constantly to be more or have more than she has always feels very teenager – life can’t just be what she has, she must need or be destined for greater things, or to improve in some way, to make it to the college she wants, to find some deeper meaning, to live a life that expands beyond her horizons and make her stand out.

But, the film suggests, she actually seems destined to become someone more like her mother –decent, kind, gentle, perhaps with a greater artistic calling, but fundamentally a thoughtful person. One early boyfriend – very well played by Lucas Hedges – who is revealed as unsuitable in a way not-at-all surprising when you consider he is the lead actor of the school drama group – is someone she accepts and comforts with a complete emotional openness. Her father’s travails in the job market is something she feels great empathy for. When returning to the company of her friend Julie, she is warm, caring and full of energetic affection.

It makes for a gentle and engaging film – perhaps nothing you haven’t really seen before, but presented with a lot of assurance and freshness by Gerwig, who is a director with an eye for the moving moment (a scene where Tracy Lett’s father sees his son go-up for the same job as him – a job for which the son is more qualified – is unmatched in its sad mix of acceptance and pride) and more than a taste for the eccentric comedy that brings spark to the drama. Powered by two excellent performances by Ronan and Metcalfe, Lady Bird may, like many teenagers, be difficult to like sometimes but has lots of promise.

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer are lovers drawn together in Call Me By Your Name

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (Elio Perlman), Armie Hammer (Oliver), Michael Stuhlbarg (Professor Perlman), Amira Casar (Annella Perlman), Esther Garrell (Marzia), Victoire Du Bois (Chiara)

First love is a story everyone can relate to. Call Me By Your Name unfolds an engrossing early romance, where precocious 17-year old Elio (Timothée Chalamat) discovers his bisexuality through his deep attraction to his professor father’s (Michael Stuhlbarg) summer research assistant, 24-year old Oliver (Armie Hammer). An attraction which, over a long hot summer in Northern Italy in 1983, finally leads to a deep romantic and sexual bond forming between the two.

Refreshingly, Guadagnino’s film is relentlessly positive and devoid of tension or disapproval. You’d expect a romance such as this – especially a gay one – to lead to an eventual outburst of furious disapproval from someone or tear-filled remonstrations that what the couple have isn’t wrong. These are avoided completely, for something that feels intensely real and convincingly grounded, especially as it follows Elio’s stumbling attempts to identify his own sexuality and understand how his feelings affect him.

This is also a showcase for acting, a film like this living or dying on the chemistry between the two lead actors, and Chalamet and Hammer have this in spades, suggesting from the very start a deep bond, that grows in emotional intensity. The relationship is a slow dance, with both of them blowing hot and cold at different times. Oliver’s first tentative approach is resoundingly rebuffed by Elio, only for Elio’s fascination with Oliver to grow into a deep unexpressed longing, which Oliver is nervous about responding to for a host of factors, from the age difference to his residence in Elio’s parents’ house. Even after the two come together, Elio’s confusion about his own feelings leads him to turn colder before the two finally find an equilibrium that works.

It’s also a classic coming of age story, as Elio moves out of adolescence and into adulthood. Elio never feels like a traditional teenager in the first place, a musical prodigy and talented autodidact who seems to have read nearly everything (“Is there anything you don’t know?” Oliver jokingly says at one point after Elio explains the detailed history of a war memorial). But in other ways he is the same as any other teen: sex-obsessed and confused, spending a lot of time with two female friends who he seems to be unsure of his feelings are towards, indulging in explorative sexual fantasies and fumbled exploration of his own and others’ bodies, working out what he likes and what he doesn’t.

It leads to a superb performance from Chalamet (youngest ever nominee for Best Actor at the Oscars), who perfectly captures both the intelligence of Elio, and his confused lack of understanding of who or what he is. Chalamet’s body language – a mixture of awkward teen and assured adult, is a perfect physical expression of his part-adult, part-child psyche. Like any teenager, he’s at times selfish, greedy or plain annoying. But at many others he’s sensitive, delicate, vulnerable and desperate to express his love. Chalamet juggles all these competing emotions and hormonal drives brilliantly, and his face is a true instrument of expression, a sliding kaleidoscope of confused urges that compels your attention.

It’s a perfect match-up with Hammer, who is superb as just the sort of boisterous, confident, exciting and sexy presence you can imagine being drawn towards. But Hammer also laces Oliver with a tenderness, a concern and a gentleness beneath his joie de vive that really expands the character’s soul and makes him not just a force of vibrancy but also a genuinely lovely man. Hammer is very careful (as is the film) to avoid the possibility of Oliver being seen as a seducer, and it does this by giving him a touching restraint as well as manipulation-free openness, an honesty and an emotional freeness that helps make him more often the pursued rather than the pursuer.

Guadagnino lets this gentle love story unfold over a luscious, gorgeous Italian summer, with his camera drifting contentedly around the two lovers and their environment, as much a part of the dance of their initial attraction. The film is resolutely “in the moment” and has no flashbacks, flash forwards or any real reference to any narrative events outside of what we see on screen. It unfolds gracefully and naturally, with the camera work largely taking an unflashy but still warm view on everything we see.

Guadagnino deliberately treats much of the central romance element with reserve, avoiding too much nudity and panning discretely away from sexual encounters between the two. (I will say though, that he has no such reserve with Elio’s heterosexual encounters, where female nudity and sex are shown in full.) It does successfully preserve a sense of innocence and purity in the relationship – and keeps the focus on the fact that this love between the two is about them becoming better people, who understand themselves better, through the relationship.

This positive message is reinforced by the acceptance of Elio and Oliver from all in the film, including Elio’s parents. Michael Stuhlbarg in particular has a scene near the end of the film of wonderful power – cementing his status from this film as a dream dad – with a speech to his son so full of acceptance, encouragement and love that you’ll feel your heart melt. Both Elio’s parents are very aware of the relationship and tacitly encourage it: according to this film at least, if you’re young and gay, growing up in a Bohemian, academic household does make your life easier! (Even Oliver comments that Elio has no idea how lucky he is.)

This film is also refreshing for its lack of casualties. Sure the two girls Elio and Oliver flirt with are disregarded swiftly, and the film gives only a little time to their rather shabby treatment, but generally it’s a film about learning who you are by spending time with someone else. And if that includes a few moments of teen awkward sexual exploration that are almost unbearable to watch (a scene with a curious Elio and a peach is a case in point, replete with queasy sound effects) then so be it.

Call Me By Your Name is a terrific coming-of-age tale, emotionally honest, true and mature and directed with a graceful ease and unshowy skill that is a testament to the deep confidence and grace of its director. With two superb performances and some excellent support work, it’s a glorious summer movie of love that will speak to you regardless of sexuality.