Luca Guadagnino Addresses James Ivory’s Criticism For ‘Call Me By Your Name’

The filmmaker also believes that Ivory was “tone deaf” to criticise the film. “Maybe the script which he wrote which was a draft which then I reworked with my editor was compelled to tell this story through the perspective of a very expositionary kind of nudity. “But that would have been his idea of the movie which, unfortunately, we haven’t seen so I don’t know. I think James was a little tone deaf about the situation,” Guadagnino added.

Ivory, who adapted the story from Andre Aciman’s novel of the same name and won an Oscar for Best Screenplay, had said avoiding nudity in films always seemed “phony” to him. “Call Me is a coming-of-age story about 17-year-old Elio who falls in love with Oliver, an older intern who’s come to spend the summer working with Elio’s father at the family’s Italian villa.

The film made an overnight star out of lead actor Timothee Chalamet, who played Elio in the movie. During the interview, Guadagnino also talked about the criticism many directors have faced over casting straight actors for LGBTQ characters.

“I honestly don’t believe I have the right to decide whether an actor is straight or not. Who am I to know what somebody is thinking of himself or herself within themselves. Yes, Armie is a straight man with a wife and children and the same can be said of Timothee. But do I ask them to swear on their sexuality, on their identities, on their desires, before I cast them? I don’t,” the 49-year-old filmmaker said. Guadagnino made it clear that he would never cast an actor on the basis on his sexuality as his method is to search the character in an artiste.