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EVENTS
'Call Me by Your Name' - Press Conference with Hammer, Chalamet & Guadagnino!
The A Bigger Splash director, Luca Guadgnino returned to the London Film Festival with the acclaimed film Call Me by Your Name. Featuring Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, and Esther Garrell.
The cast explained how they felt about the movie and why they decided to take part in the project.
Armie Hammer explains that when he first read the script he was impressed by the honesty and raw emotional response. He wasn’t sure how to approach some of the vulnerabilities of the role so he spoke with Luca about the challenges he needed to face and the director answered: "starring in a movie must be a challenging experience, each role has its difficulties. Don't you want to be challenged by a movie?"
Guadagnino went on to describe the process behind the development of the movie, “It was really a long process. The main difficulty was shooting in Crema and being faithful to the story. I love Aciman's book, so I tried to build a language that could represent both the place and its people as they were described in the original story. Considering that it is a recollection of memories after the events, the book is in the third person.That's the main difference: what I tried to do was being with these characters and represent them authentically. So I didn't use a voiceover."
Discussing James Ivory’s role he went on to say, “James and I worked on the script in 2014/2015, I am a cinephile and I wanted to watch a movie directed by Ivory, but then the role of direction passed to me. I love the script, it works but it changed a lot in the process.
The whole cast explained their relationship with the Italian setting. Esther Garrell felt that the landscape was a mirror for her acting. She felt like in a bubble, Timothée arrived four weeks before the start of shooting and two weeks before Hammer and he had time to get to know various places. He then bonded with Hammer, and they developed their on-screen chemistry.
One of the most interesting questions involved Sufjan Stevens. Guadagnino explained how he got in touch with him: " I have always admired the great depth of Sufjan. We felt that the movie needed a god-like figure that controlled the narration. Instead of Kubrick's cards to divide the timelines, we chose someone so honest and authentic and Sufjan's songs are another character. I approached him and he replied: 'why not?' We have three songs, two are new, one is a reinterpretation."
The conference ended with a funny anecdote of the first and only rehearsal they did, Guadignino asked Hammer and Chalamet to make out and then he left them alone.
The cast seems to have an incredible affection for each other and Call Me by Your Name will be out in cinemas starting from October 27.
