arts&life

film

Call Me By
Your Name

The highly touted fi lm based on a novel by an Egyptian-born

Jew tells of gay lovers who bonded as Jews fi rst.

JESSICA STEINBERG TIMES OF ISRAEL

I

André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name,
now a film and possible Oscar contender.

details

Call Me by Your Name is now playing at the
Main Arts Theatre in Royal Oak.

30

January 4 • 2018

jn

n all of André Aciman’s life — as a
father’s university student, who is their
child in Alexandria, Egypt, a refugee
houseguest] Star of David necklace and
in Rome and a new immigrant in
for him, who grew up in an Italy that is
New York — he never quite saw
not anti-Semitic but where there
ABOVE:
himself as a Jew.
are no Jews, he sees the Magen
Timothée
Yet his 2007 novel, Call Me
David and he’s stunned at Oliver’s
Chalamet (left) boldness and effrontery.”
by Your Name, now made into
and Armie
a poignant coming-of-age film
It was a moment that Aciman
Hammer in Call
seen as a landmark in gay cin-
drew from his own childhood in
Me by Your
ema and reportedly a shoo-in
Alexandria, where he was raised
Name.
for an Oscar nomination, is as
in a French-speaking home
much about being Jewish as it is
by parents who were secular
about first love.
Sephardic Jews of Turkish and Italian
“I would never have been able to write origins.
this book without Jewish content,” said
The sight of two brothers in
Aciman, speaking from his home in New Alexandria who wore mezuzahs on their
York City.
necklaces at the beach astounded an
“It appears early on in the novel. Elio
8-year-old Aciman.
[the teenager played by Jewish actor
“It made me pay attention,” he said.
Timothee Chalamet], sees Oliver’s [Elio’s “It alerted me to something.”

In his book, the Jewish element
emerges before anything sexual or
romantic happens between the two
young men, said Aciman.
“It’s not sexual, but Jewish at first,”
he said. “It’s something fundamental
and deep-rooted between them. It’s
the development of an essential bond
between them.”
The book was optioned by the film’s
director, Luca Guadagnino, years ago,
but it took time for him to find financ-
ing. With a screenplay written by
Guadagnino and James Ivory, whom he
granted carte blanche, Aciman never
worried about the adaptation and said
he “loved” the entire production.
He marveled that there was no par-
tisanship in the making of the film, nor
politics.