Monday, November 20, 2017

Quotes of the Day

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Did you guys catch this video on Timothée's Instagram over the weekend? Armie & Luca hugging and then Armie playing with his phone while laying on Luca's lap is my new favorite thing ever. I LOVE THEIR LOVE. If they actually do make a sequel to this movie they'd better do it on the sly because otherwise there will be a storm of stalkers jetting to Italy, for real. (Self included.) Anyway it's really rather impossible for me to quote all of the quotes I want to quote from interviews with the folks behind this movie - they have been doing a truly insane amount of press. But I'll give you a couple of my faves.
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In the THR interview with Armie (the one that I posted the hot photo-shoot from earlier) Armie talks about his & Luca's relationship (yes the above bit of info's a killer) and also this:

""Luca is a sensualist," Hammer tells me as we make our way back to the city. "He floats through the ether like he wants to make love to everything. He'll literally be like, 'Ooohh — I love your jeans.' " He leans over and places a hand on my thigh, then slowly slides it toward my knee. "At first you're kind of like, 'Whoa.' " (I too was like, "Whoa.") "But then you're like, 'Yeah! They are really nice! Feel this part over here!'""

Luca, you lucky motherfucker. Just think - Luca has made a life for himself where he's great friends with Tilda Swinton and where Armie Hammer asks him to feel him up. I wish I was one tenth as good at life as Luca is. Continuing on...
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... I did the briefest of tweet-storms last night (after my sixth viewing of Call Me By Your Name!) about how overlooked and undervalued Esther Garrel's performance has been so far, so I was glad to see an interview with the actress in today's NY Post -- you should go read it. I laughed out loud at what she said about the folks who've had dumb things to say about the age difference between Elio & Oliver in the film:

"I can understand that for some old people, maybe it’s a big difference, but I think for our generation, we are beyond that kind of question. Above all else, the movie is about desire and can happen between so many different people.”

"For some old people," LOL. 
You tell them hags, Esther! 

Moving on to a quote I read last week but which I was really very happy to read - I talked about this centerpiece shot in the film (where Elio & Oliver finally break the tension between them while walking through town square all in a single unbroken shot) before when Timothee was asked about it, but it remains one of my most favorite moments in the film and I want to hear all I can about how it was worked out. And so here's Luca talking about it to Film Journal:

"His intuition about casting the duo paid off in more ways than he anticipated. Not only do Chalamet and Hammer deliver two of this year’s most profound, sophisticated and moving performances, they also operated as true collaborators. Guadagnino fondly remembers the day they had to capture the film’s most challenging shot in a town square, a key moment when Elio first opens up to Oliver and confesses his feelings. In a single take that expands and widens on screen, we watch the duo as they approach a monument together and walk to its opposite sides while they continue to converse in a touching, cryptic fashion about their mutual attraction.
Turns out the stunning shot was Armie Hammer’s idea. “We had five or six pages of dialogue. I was like, ‘Oh my god. How do we do this?’ Reverse angles and stuff. And then Armie said, ‘Why don't you do it in one shot?’ And I said, ‘One shot? Six pages of script? Okay! Let's start with blocking the scene: How do you come in, where do you go, where do you look around?’ After they acted the scene from the beginning to the end, I said, ‘I know what to do.’ We waited for two hours to get more tracks from Milan. Then we simply put it together and did it in an hour. So it's about collaboration. A great actor is not someone who goes into the trailer, waits for the shot and then goes back to the trailer. A great actor is someone who stays on set and becomes a filmmaker.”"

That whole interview at Film Journal is highly recommended.
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4 comments:

Unknown said...

Lovely Esther Garrel. But she's wrong about old folks complaining about age gap, take a tour or Tumblr and read some of the relentless college-age kids being 'troubled' and 'concerned' and unable to write a sentence without 'heteronormative' or 'cisgender' or 'power dynamics' in it. Being woke never made me so sleepy.

Jason Adams said...

Unknown - Yeah, I know. i have seen all that, it is exhausting. I agree she's wrong, I just thought her quote was funny. I remember feeling the way she does here - oh clueless OLD people, we are so UNIQUE, us young people. I thought it was adorable, and it made me happy as a contrast to all of those exhausting Tumblr people you mention :)

Anonymous said...

I think people of younger generations are possibly even more disapproving of age gaps. I am somewhat apprehensive about that kind of age gap myself. But I don't think every relationship with that age gap is always predatory and it doesn't seem to be the case in this film.

mangrove said...

Working in the French cinema industry, Esther must have witnessed her fair share of young starlets boning older producers/directors. She just must be used to that icky stuff by now.