Call Me By Your Name author André Aciman confirms today that he’s writing a sequel. The 2017 film version of Aciman’s 2007 novel, starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, became a global sensation and staple in contemporary queer cinematic love stories. It went on to be nominated for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Chalamet, ultimately winning Best Adapted Screenplay for screenwriter James Ivory. The story, set in 1980s Northern Italy follows the summer romance between teenager Elio Perlman (Chalamet), and an America graduate student name Oliver (Hammer), boarding at the Perlman family home. Both the novel and the film follow a coming-of-age narrative, focusing on Elio’s discovery of his sexuality and spiraling infatuation with the reluctant, but mutually enamored Oliver. They eventually consummate their relationship, and the film ends with Elio navigating his first heartbreak after Oliver goes home and later reveals to the Perlman family that he’s getting married.
Director Luca Guadagnino has been very vocal about creating one or more sequels following the success of the first film. Earlier this year, Guadagnino suggested picking up the story in 1989, and exploring the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the AIDS crisis. Michael Stuhlbarg, who played Elio’s father Professor Perlman stated in an interview that both Guadagnino and Aciman were enthusiastic about continuing the story, although Ivory recently confirmed that he’s not interested in working on a sequel. He’d previously criticized the censorship decisions on the final production. However, at this point, all signs point to the sequel coming to fruition.
Aciman announced on Twitter that he’s writing the Call Me By Your Name sequel, which has appropriately warranted a lengthy thread of fans replying with GIFs of the movie’s dance party scene, featuring Hammer and Chalamet. Check out the tweet below:
Excitement intensified after Hammer replied to Aciman, suggesting that he’s interested in returning to the project. At the time of the film’s release, Hammer and Chalamet were interviewed extensively about depicting an LGBT love story on-screen, and the resulting friendship between the two actors.
Whether or not Aciman will be writing based on the 1989-set plans Guadagnino outlined, the big question among fans is how a sequel would tie into the first novel’s 20 year epilogue. Following their summer romance, Elio and Oliver are said to have come into contact briefly a few times over the years. However the decades-later moment in the book in which Oliver concedes, “I remember everything,” when Elio asks what he remembers about their summer together takes place during the film’s final scene, which happens in the winter after the summer they met. Call Me By Your Name does the work of exploring the anxieties and personal limitations of being queer in the early 1980s, through Elio and Oliver’s relationship. To Guadagnino’s point, the characters have become recognized and loved to the point that delving into changing political atmospheres through their relationship presents another opportunity to depict queer relationships in a previously seldom-seen way.
MORE: How Call Me By Your Name’s Ending Differs From the Book
Source: André Aciman
