Call Me by Your Name hits theaters on Nov. 24, telling the tale of a powerful romance between two men during a fleeting Summer in Italy. The new film is an adaptation of the 2007 novel of the same name by André Aciman. While there are overt aspects of the film that really help it shine — the remarkable performances of fresh face Timothée Chalamet and the lovely Armie Hammer and the dreamy soundtrack are immediate standouts — there’s plenty of beauty to be found in the film’s smaller details.
Having read the book, I couldn’t help but notice a small detail that seemed to bleed into the onscreen adaptation. The paradoxical nature of the detail is that it informs Oliver’s character, but it’s not ever directly mentioned in the film.
So, if you haven’t read the book, it goes right over your head. In the many swimming scenes, Oliver (Hammer) wears swimsuits of varying colors. Sometimes, he’s in green. Sometimes, yellow.
The thing is, Oliver’s choice of swimsuit color is, allegedly, supposed to give away what’s going on inside his head. In the novel, Elio develops a little theory about Oliver’s swimsuits. Whatever color he’s wearing on any given day directly informs how he might act.
He had, it took me a while to realize, four personalities depending on what bathing suit he was wearing. Knowing which to expect gave me the illusion of a slight advantage. Red: bold, set in his ways, very grown-up, almost gruff and ill-tempered — stay away. Yellow: sprightly, buoyant, funny, not without…
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