Call Me By Your Name did not win Best Picture at the Oscars last night, but Elio and Oliver’s picturesque romance will have a second chance at scoring the coveted award. After months of exploring the idea, Luca Guadagnino confirmed a Call Me By Your Name sequel is officially in the works. Guadagnino announced the amazing news during a red carpet interview at the Oscars last night, saying he is working closely with André Aciman — the author of the novel the film is based on — to imagine Elio’s and Oliver’s future. “I’m already conceiving the story with [him], and it’s gonna happen five or six years afterwards,” Guadagnino told USA Today. “It’s gonna be a new movie, a different tone.”
Guadagnino cranked our heart rates up even more when he teased the film’s concept. “They’re gonna go around the world,” he said. Take note that Guadagnino said they. Most likely meaning Oliver and Elio will reunite and our broken hearts with be taped back together. We can totally imagine a 25-year-old Elio abstaining from securing a “real boy” job and, instead, choosing to nourish his cultured interests through country hopping. And who better to do that with than Oliver?
The fact that Guadagnino is collaborating with Aciman on the plot reassures us the film won’t “jump the shark.” It is very plausible there is more to Elio and Oliver’s romance than what Aciman gave us in his novel. Although not depicted in the film, the last chapter of the book sees a forty-something Elio, who is now a professor in America, visit Oliver and his family for dinner. What’s largely unspoken is what has happened in the twenty years between Oliver and Elio’s summer romance and the bittersweet meeting. And the sequel will be great timing. Guadagnino says he intends to shoot the film when Timothée is 25-years-old — Elio’s age in the followup.
Guadagnino has said he would like the sequel to address the AIDS crisis, which would have begun right when Elio entered adulthood. “I think Elio will be a cinephile, and I’d like him to be in a movie theater watching Paul Vecchiali’s Once More,” Guadagnino told The Hollywood Reporter last month. Once More is a 1988 drama cited as one of the first French films to deal with AIDS, depicting a man leaving his wife for another man. “That could be the first scene [in the sequel].”
There’s more good news. This sequel probably won’t be the last we see of Elio. Guadagnino is interested in making a trilogy of Call Me By Your Name films, tracking different stages of Elio’s life. Basically, looks like we’re going to be talking about Call Me By Your Name for years to come. Sorry not sorry.