Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino denies ‘censoring’ gay sex scenes
Armie Hammer and Timothee Chamalet in Call Me By Your Name. (Sony)
Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino is once again defending his decision to shy away from nudity and sex scenes in the Oscar-nominated movie.
Based on the original book of the same name and adapted from a more explicit screenplay by James Ivory, Guadagnino has been forced to field criticism after his 2017 film’s airbrushed depiction of the gay romance skipped past the book’s most intimate sex scenes.
In an interview with Fantastic Man, the director attempted to explain his choice to make camera pan away by claiming it was because he was “leaving the lovers alone”.
“I didn’t want to make a movie about the lust of two bodies. Call Me by Your Name is a movie about love,” Guadagnino explained. “It’s never about showing a raunchy moment of sex, or whatever kind of sex they were having. I don’t know how these guys were having sex. That’s not the point.”
Call Me By Your Name. (Twitter/Sony)
He denied censoring the film in order to help the story appeal to a more mainstream audience as he added: “That was never a consideration. Nobody thought while we were filming that we were making a mainstream film about gay love, or that we were going to have a huge audience.
“Who could have known? The idea of us deciding that we didn’t want to show what it means when two boys f**k – it’s preposterous!”
The Suspiria director went on to argue that he’s had sexual acts appear in his films before, so it wouldn’t be right to call him “prudish”.
He stated: “I made a short film in 1997 called Qui – I was 24 or 25 when I shot it, and I presented it at the Taormina Film Festival – it’s a 16-minute depiction of a blow job. I’m not squeamish. I am not. If I have to show what sex is, I’ll show it.”
The director had previously claimed that he never intended for the film to include nudity or sex scenes, which led screenwriter Ivory to call out his claim in 2018.
Speaking to The Guardian, Ivory revealed that his screenplay specified that Elio and Oliver would be shown fully naked and included sex scenes.
He alleged that the film was changed because lead actors Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet both had clauses included in their contracts that prohibited full-frontal nudity.
