Three years ago, Call Me By Your Name hit theaters and people fell in love with the story of 17-year-old student, Elio, who meets and falls in love with older grad student, Oliver, one summer in Italy. Naturally, it ends with heartbreak, with Oliver ending it with Elio when he moves back to the United States at the end of the summer. It was a near-perfect adaptation of André Aciman’s novel of the same name.
But what captivated people so much were the nuanced and poignant performances by Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer as Elio and Oliver, respectively. Chalamet was nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars, and the film itself for Best Picture and Best Original Song, ultimately winning an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Chalamet was also nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globes with Hammer nominated for Best Supporting Actor and the film again nominated for Best Picture. The magic Hammer and Chalamet created together on screen was that sort of lightning in a bottle chemistry that is rare.
But a sequel is on the way and director Luca Guadagnino confirmed in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica that both actors would be returning for the sequel, along with the rest of the main cast. “Of course, it was a great pleasure to work with Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Esther Garrel and the other actors,” Guadagnino said. “Everyone will be in the new movie.”
While we don’t know much about the sequel, we can assume it will be based on the sequel to the novel, titled Find Me. The sequel features all the same characters and is based 10 years after the events of the first book. It’s told in four parts: Tempo, Cadenza, Capriccio, Da Capo, with each part revolving around a different character. The first part, “Tempo,” is narrated by Samuel “Sami” Perlman, Elio’s father, and tells the story of how he, now divorced, travels from Florence to Rome to visit Elio and has an encounter that changes his life. “Cadenza” is set five years after those events and is narrated by Elio, who is an accomplished pianist now living in Paris. While there, he has an affair with a man named Michel but eventually both realize Michel is not “the one.” The third part, “Capriccio,” features another time jump of five years, happening 20 years after the events of Call Me By Your Name. Oliver takes over the narration. Now a professor in New England and a father to two sons, he looks back at his life and considers a trip to Europe. Finally, “Da Capo,” narrated by Elio, takes place not long after the events of “Capriccio.”
Whether or not the sequel will feature quite so many time jumps or adhere exactly to the story of the sequel remains to be seen, but we can assume it will at least borrow heavily from it.
Interestingly, Aciman revealed in an interview last year with Vulture that it was the film adaptation that prompted him to go back and write a sequel to the novel:
“The world of Call Me by Your Name never left me. Though I created the characters and was the author of their lives, what I never expected was that they’d end up teaching me things about intimacy and about love that I didn’t quite think I knew until I’d put them down on paper. The film made me realize that I wanted to be back with them and watch them over the years — which is why I wrote Find Me“.
Hopefully, the sequel can recapture the magic of the first film.
Find Me doesn’t yet have a release date, but with the cast all back on board and the script adaptation being worked on right now, we can anticipate more news of this hitting the internet as soon as Hollywood productions start picking back up again.
