Call Me By Your Name (2017) - Luca Guadagnino

An honest and heartfelt coming of age story told through the prism of forbidden love & carnal desire, Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name presents a relatively taboo storyline with grace, deconstructing the turbulent and life-changing effect love and lust can have on the psyche of a young individual whom is still trying to understand himself. Juxtaposing the confusion and discomfort of adolescence with the freedom and exuberance felt by first love, Call Me By Your Name at its core is a story about connection and companionship, examining how kinship can be an instrumental aspect in self discovery. Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name is sensual yet fleeting, a film which manages to capture how all emotions, whether positive or negative, are important to self-discovery and self-worth.  Passion, desire, and love drive us to places that leave us vulnerable to hardship and pain, yet they also provide us with joy and companionship, often giving us a better understanding of ourselves through such intimacy.  Throughout Call Me By Your Name's narrative we know that Elio's relationship with the older Oliver is one which will never last, yet it's through their connection that Elio goes through a personal evolution, one which inevitably ends in emotional pain, but one which has helped shape him as a person and given him much joy in those moments they shared, being a transformative time in his life which he will never forget.