When Call Me by Your Name was presented at the Sundance Festival, Luca Guadagnino was required to invent an appealing expression for the festival's press portfolio and crowned it as the final chapter in the "Desire Trilogy." Now that the film shown at the Cinematheque, it is a good opportunity to screen the three films that comprise the trilogy and discuss the commonalities and differences between them and the way in which Guadagnino's filmmaking has developed.
The plots of the three films are quite different, but there are many similarities: they take place in the Italian landscape, at a measured pace, within the well-established world of the bourgeoisie, and describe how the heroes’ passion completely shakes their lives. Guadagnino uses the familiar conflict of values: desire as part of nature and spontaneity, and loyalty to tradition and society.
Even more so than this conflict, it is the way Guadagnino shapes it that is interesting. He does so with great cinema, where the camera moves elegantly, the images are dramatic, the color choices are intense, and the music plays a significant role in creating atmosphere and rhythm. His characters devote themselves to desire, and this dedication leads them to an abnormal behavior that moves toward the raucous and pathetic. Guadagnino combines cinema that goes to the extreme with heroes that find themselves in similar circumstances, and his films move with a degree of tension around their ability to bear these forces.
Watching the three films attests to the way in which the Guadagnino’s filmmaking has developed. While in I am Love and A Bigger Splash the pitiful leads to a certain amount of refutation that allows these forces to exist on the canvas, Call Me by Your Name - thanks to a solid script, the desire, passion, and love conquer our hearts. Either way, Guadagnino is undoubtedly a fascinating and significant voice in world cinema, and this small program is another opportunity to recognize it.
