For all our coverage of Toronto International Film Festival 2017, click here.
Well, it was my first Toronto International Film Festival this year as Vanyaland film editor, and it was a tremendously crazy six days while I was up there. I saw a total of 22 movies, including some that I'll be writing about later, but what we've got for you today, to wrap up our coverage of the TIFF, is a collection of capsule reviews -- what we've dubbed "the rest of the fest." Some are notable and award-winning, others are absolutely miserable and worth running away from. We have new works from Joseph Kahn, John Woo, Brie Larson, Scott Cooper, and many others telling tales from all ends of the genre spectrum. Hey, this list even includes one of the best films I've seen all year, so check it out.
Call Me by Your Name
I promise you that I’ll have a longer review of this film when it nears its release, because I honestly don’t know how to process how much I love this film or quantify it. You can’t see the paragraphs and paragraphs that I’ve thrown out into the ether in my stupid attempts to quantify it, and I’m thankful for that, but director Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love, A Bigger Splash) has crafted himself a sterling masterpiece aching with the beauty and humor and melancholy of ephemeral first love. Elio (Timothee Chalamet), the Italian-American son of a professor of antiquities (a heartbreaking and wonderful Michael Stuhlbarg), begins to fall in love with his father’s intern, Oliver (Armie Hammer), a beautiful 24-year-old American from the Northeast, and their romance spans over the course of a whole summer in the beautiful Italian countryside. Chalamet and Hammer are perfectly cast, and they have a beautiful chemistry that manifests and changes over the course of the film, and also each embodies the era in which the film is set: It’s in the early ’80s, and The Psychedelic Furs reign supreme.
Hammer is a hot fucking marvel here, full of preppy energy fresh off of the Vineyard beach, but he’s tender and lovely when things stop heating up. But Chalamet might be the true revelation — he just personifies teenage restlessness, full of the hopped-up and hormonal angst and the childish petulance and the painful goofiness that is instantly recognizable if you’ve ever actually looked back on your teenage days with anything other than nostalgia. James Ivory’s script wonderfully translates Andre Aciman’s novel to the screen, and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Uncle Bonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) captures the era and the sunny afternoon haze of Tuscany may actually bring you to tears with beauty. And if that doesn’t work, the two new Sufjan songs might as well. Guadagnino has crafted one of the finest films of the year, one that’s worthy of extensive and lavish praise that I can’t totally fulfill here. So look for more near the time of its release in November, but be very, very excited to see this one when it comes out later this year.