Little White Lies Issue 71

Directed by LUCA GUADAGNINO Starring TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET, ARMIE HAMMER, ESTHER GARREL Released 27 OCTOBER Have you ever regretted not reaching out to someone, or telling them how you really feel? Love makes us do crazy, stupid things. It can inspire bold declarations and uncharacteristic bravery, just as it can strangle us with the fear of rejection. In any case, love tends to leave its mark in mysterious ways, and in order to fully understand it we must first learn to take the bad with the good. Based on André Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name, this beautiful film concerns a brief but lasting romance between a 17-year-old Italian-American boy and a twentysomething American man who is more experienced in matters of the heart but no less susceptible to its sudden, all-consuming desires.…

There’s an obvious link between Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s breakthrough film and his most recent one. 2009’s I Am Love lavished in the erotic potential of food, with the camera sensually gliding down long dining tables packed with gorgeous edible treats. In his new film, Call Me by Your Name, an intense formative love match is juxtaposed against orchards of over-ripe fruit. In one scene, Armie Hammer scoffs down a number of soft-boiled eggs in a manner that’s enough to get any innocent viewer a little hot under the collar. Perhaps the thing that ties all Guadagnino’s recent movies together – an abstract mission statement of sorts – is the he way builds up an erotic ambience around his characters, almost making it impossible for them to keep their desires…

James Ivory’s stylish and literate EM Forster adaptation from 1985, A Room with a View, is packed with veteran larcenists who merrily pickpocket one another throughout the film. The most delicious and flagrant of these is Maggie Smith as Charlotte Bartlett, the prim and forbidding old-maid aunt of Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham-Carter). Actors like Judi Dench and Denholm Elliott are also on hand to purloin scenes from the leads. Rupert Graves, as Lucy’s younger brother, even goes so far as to rob Julian Sands of his rightful status as the film’s heartthrob, oneupping him in vigour, charm and boyish prettiness. Daniel Day-Lewis, playing Lucy’s prissy, effete, supercilious fiancé Cecil Vyse, rivals neither as an object of desire in the film - and it is one of the many miracles of…

Elio LWLies: What’s your fondest memory from being on set? Armie Hammer: If I had to pick one thing it would be the meals. Luca is a consummate epicurean, and watching how he sensually interacts with everything, it’s like he truly wants to fuck everything around him. It makes you enjoy the food more, it makes you enjoy the wine more, the ambience, the sensations, the fabric, the tablecloth, everything. There was this one meal we had in a little tiny town called Orzoni, we must have ordered at least a kilo of caviar. We ate caviar and drank ice-cold vodka and had amazing wine from the wine cellar. I recently went back to Crema, where we shot the film, largely to see Luca, but equally largely to go to…

Marzia LWLies: Do you think you were born into acting? I think that it’s a difficult question. I first acted when I was 16, and before that I wanted to be a lawyer. So maybe there’s something in between acting and being a lawyer that I have yet to discover. Before that I wanted to be a musician – I played the violin. I guess that’s in the same sphere? Before that, at the age of ten, I saw a play at a theatre. I saw this young French actress and thought she was so amazing. I wanted to get up on stage with her right then. That was the first feeling I had. Then, at 15, wanted to learn, so I went to school. Did you do theatre? Never.…

BY ROXANNE SANCTO I lived in Holland for seven years where I attended an international college. I was around 14 years old when a Dutch friend of mine introduced me to Jan Wolkers’ ‘Turkish Delight’ (Turks Fruit), the only compulsory read he actually enjoyed during his high-school career. I read the book in two days, and have read it at least 20 times since. My friend invited me to watch the movie adaption by Paul Verhoeven. I was terrified this captivating story of the young, broke artist Eric and his intense love for the beautiful, susceptible Olga wouldn’t make the transition to the screen. I feared the obsessive intensity of Eric’s feelings and the complexity of Olga’s eversearching character would somehow get lost. Yet in deploying subtle details, Verhoeven manages…