Call Me by Your Name Page #3

OLIVER:

Just play it again, please!

ELIO begins playing the piece again. OLIVER listens, then

speaks:

OLIVER (CONT’D)

I can’t believe you changed it

again.

ELIO:

Not by much. That’s how Busoni

would've played it if he’d altered

Liszt’s version.

OLIVER:

Can’t you just play the Bach the

way Bach wrote it?

ELIO:

Bach never wrote it for guitar. In

fact, we’re not even sure it’s Bach

at all.

OLIVER:

Forget I asked.

ELIO:

Okay, okay. No need to get so

worked up.

ELIO begins to play the Bach in its original form. OLIVER,

who had turned away, comes back to the door. ELIO says,

softly, over his playing:

ELIO (CONT’D)

It’s young Bach, he dedicated it to

his brother.

He plays it beautifully, as if sending it to OLIVER as a

gift.

16 INT. ELIO’S BEDROOM -PERLMAN VILLA -LATER 16

ELIO is writing his diary, the wind is moving the curtains.

He then puts the open diary on the bed and goes into the

shared bathroom to pee, shutting the door behind him. The

camera moves close on to the diary and we read: “...I was too

harsh when I told him I thought he hated Bach...”

11.

The wind blows the pages of the little book, then dies down

so that we can go on reading: “What I wanted to say was that

I thought he hated me...”

17 EXT. STREETS/CARD CAFE -TOWN STREET -DAY 17

Another day.

OLIVER and ELIO walk down a street; OLIVER steps into a cafe.

Some men inside are sitting at two or three tables with

playing cards. Waiters bring coffee and other drinks to the

customers, the place is lively.

NARRATOR:

Taking in summer guests was Elio’s

dad and mom, The Perlmans, a way of

helping young academics revise

manuscript before publication.

Summer residents didn’t have to pay

anything, they were given the full

run of the house and could

basically do anything they pleased,

provided they spent an hour or so a

day helping Professor Perlman with

his correspondence and assorted

paperwork. Oliver manuscript was on

Heraclithus and already had found a

publisher in Italy for a translated

version. Elio’s father loved

nothing better than to have some

precocious rising expert in his

field of study helping him.

Some of the men look up and nod at OLIVER. A game is starting

at one of the tables and OLIVER is asked to join. He sitsdown to play.

ELIO:

How did you know about this place?

Oliver winks. ELIO pulls up a chair and sits, spectating. The

cards are dealt. OLIVER, accepted at once, treats his fellow

PLAYERS as equals. Despite being a ‘rich’ American‘intellectual’, a guest at the villa of one of the area’s

richest men, he has the ‘common touch’.

ELIO is soon forgotten by OLIVER. Now and then he supplies a

translation of something said in Lombard dialect by one of

the PLAYERS, to which OLIVER replies, “Thanks, Buddy!”

18 EXT. MAIN ENTRANCE LAWN -PERLMAN VILLA -AFTERNOON 18

A few of ELIO’S FRIENDS play a volleyball game in a makeshift

court set up on the lawn by the main entrance of the villa.

OLIVER is playing with CHIARA, MARZIA’s slightly oldersister, and another BOY.

12.

The three make up one side of the game, while the opposing

team is made up of THREE OTHERS we haven't met.

ELIO sits on the side with MARZIA and another friend MARIA.

All eyes are on OLIVER, the glamorous American who has

unexpectedly dropped into their midst. MARZIA and her friend

ask questions about him.

MARZIA:

(in Italian)

Sicuramente è meglio di quello

dell’anno scorso, ti ricordi?

(He’s certainly a big improvement

from last year, do you remember?)

ELIO and MARZIA laugh.

MARIA:

(in Italian)

Oliver è un cowboy biondo

latinista!

(Oliver is a latin blonde scolar

cowboy!)

ELIO gives MARIA a look that says “Yes”, rolling his eyes.

MARIA (CONT’D)

(looking at Elio and Marzia)

Bella fregatura! Un’altra estate

nella lavanderia.

(Well, that sucks for you guys!

Another summer in the lavanderia.)

MARZIA jokingly punches MARIA’s shoulder. ELIO, bored and put

off, gets up and goes to a nearby table under the lime trees,

on it is some fresh fruit and a bottle of cold water.

He takes the bottle and goes to his friends, offering it.

OLIVER takes the bottle and drinks, then hands it back to

ELIO without thanking him. OLIVER then puts his free arm

around ELIO, gently squeezing his thumb and forefingers into

Elio’s shoulder in a friendly hug-massage.

ELIO, taken by surprise, is spellbound for an instant,

yielding to Oliver’s hand, even leaning into it --then he

wrenches himself away from Oliver’s grab. Taken aback, OLIVER

apologizes, asking ELIO if he’d pressed a nerve or something:

“I didn’t mean to hurt you”. Honestly not wanting to

discourage OLIVER, ELIO blurts out “I’m not hurt”. ELIO has

the face of someone trying, but failing, to smother a grimace

of pain. OLIVER goes along with this charade.

OLIVER:

(back to massaging Elio’s

shoulder)

Here, let me make it better. Relax.

Revision13.

ELIO:

But I am relaxing.

OLIVER:

You’re stiff as a board. You’re

made of knots.

(to Marzia)

Come here, feel this...

MARZIA puts her hands on Elio’s back. OLIVER presses her

flattened palm hard against it.

OLIVER (CONT’D)

Here. Feel it? He should relax

more.

MARZIA:

You should relax more.

MARIA:

(to Oliver)

She certainly knows how to get him

to relax.

ELIO relaxes until the others lose interest and resume the

game. The two boys are playing against the sisters now.

Elio’s view of the players and of the ball in the air over

their heads is often obscured by the OLIVER's muscular back,

moving in closer from the side. Sometimes they collide, trip,

fall into a heap. The girls shout rudely in Italian. *

Elio goes back to the table under the lime trees and sits in

the shade, far from the others. He is inadvertently rubbing

the spot that Oliver had massaged at the base of his neck

with his free hand. MAFALDA and ANNELLA are setting up the

table for dinner.

ANNELLA:

(in Italian)

C’è Zia Marcella e annessi per

cena. Oliver si ferma con noi o

esce stasera? (Aunt Marcella iscoming to dinner with her tribe. IsOliver in or out tonight?)

ELIO:

(shrugging, in French)Je ne sais pas. (Who knows?)

MAFALDA Che muvi star!

EXT. TABLE UNDER THE LIME TREES -PERLMAN VILLA -EVENING 19

A gangly TEENAGER looks on with pretended disdain; his voice

is just changing, he has a dark fuzz, unshaven, on his upper

lip, he could be Elio three or four years earlier.

14.

PERLMAN is amusing the boy’s sisters, TWO YOUNG NIECES, aged

about seven and nine, with a card trick. He has moved plates

and cutlery around to make space for entertaining the little

nieces.

PERLMAN:

Scegli una carta. OK, ricordala

bene. (Pick a card. OK, remember it

well.)

(shuffles the deck)

È questa? (Is this it?)

20 INT. ELIO’S AND OLIVER’S BATHROOM -EVENING 20

Upstairs ELIO is shaving his own upper lip. He keeps

listening for sounds of the absent Oliver from his room -at

one point he could softly knock on the door, and upon hearing

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