In our age, hookups seem to happen so easily, so quickly, so uninhibitedly,” says André Aciman, author of the novel Call Me by Your Name. “The basic demands are minimal: pleasure, safety, respect, fun. The one thing no one talks about is, How quickly will this person leave?” His book is now a film by the same name, which tells the story of 17-year-old Elio (the sublime Timothée Chalamet, below right), who pursues 24-year-old scholar Oliver (Armie Hammer). The age gap is controversial—especially in this social and political climate—so why are critics calling the film an “affecting love story”? Aciman has the answer: “It’s about the real difficulty of opening up to someone we desire or even love without knowing how they will respond,” he says. “For all of his doubts about Oliver and about himself, Elio finds the boldness to speak.” It’s 2018, but the idea that love is a humbling act of bravery feels vividly, heartbreakingly new. We talked to Aciman to get weigh in on the ambiguities of coming-of-age stories, young love, and sexuality.

GLAMOUR: What is it about this love story that feels so important to tell right now, at the end of 2017?

ANDRÉ ACIMAN: My love stories are about people who are reluctant to actualize what they so desperately want. They are timid, cautious, but eventually they dare to speak. My characters are not only hesitant, they are ambivalent about which way their libido flows: toward men or women? They are fluid in their sexuality, and this ambivalence says more about how we think about sex today than, say, Tinder. And this is a truly modern idea: Most of us don’t know who we are sexually.

GLAMOUR: The film doesn’t revisit the characters 15 or 20 years after that first summer—a conscious decision by the filmmaker. How did you feel when you watched Elio mourn Oliver in that last, touching scene?

AA: I was extremely moved by that scene, and [based on the] emails I received from around the world, it seems that a heavy silence suddenly falls upon the audience during that extremely moving closing scene. People are crying. Film normally adapts a written novel as best it can. But film should not be a transposition but rather a translation. I could never have been able to write the powerful scene in the film when Elio stares at the fireplace for five long minutes. It says everything that was in the closing pages of my novel—and in this sense it is totally faithful to the story—and yet it says it totally differently and beautifully. Perhaps even more powerfully.

GLAMOUR: Very rarely do we get to see two men sharing in the agonizing uncertainty of new love. What could audiences learn about the vulnerability between Elio and Oliver?

AA: I wanted the uncertainty to be there in my novel, and it is there in the film. There is always going to be a risk in a new love, a difficulty to be overcome, and more so considering all the challenges facing gay love, particularly in an adolescent. The desired other person could turn out to be a wolf in sheeps’ clothing, could hurt us, could even ruin us. But the risk has to be taken. What the film also shows, as does the novel, is that besides the fear of ending up with the totally wrong person, the first time between two persons is underscored by two things: desire and awkwardness. The awkwardness of the first time when two individuals touch each other is never lost on the young…or the old.

GLAMOUR: Why do you think a love story set three decades ago—between two men; one young, one slightly less young—feels so achingly universal?

AA: Many critics speak about coming-of-age love, about initiation, about young libido, and so forth. I’ve never seen it only this way. What sets young love apart is that an adolescent is aware of every minute detail, he examines everything, his own desires, the behavior of others, realizes he may be frequently wrong in his readings, and is therefore forced to test the waters all over again. The progress is slow, cautious, tentative, even reluctant. There may be dangerous shoals up ahead. He does not know them yet. And yet, the case is no different when we are older: We continue to examine things ever so minutely, we interpret obsessively. We may be less bold at 40 than we were at 17 but we’re familiar with the roadmap; we know the bumps in the road; we recognize the sudden turns, the one-way streets, and the dead ends. And we are hurt just the same as when we were teenagers.

GLAMOUR: It’s been ten years since Call Me By Your Name was published. What did Timothée and Armie find in your words that you didn’t know anyone else had seen or felt?

As the author of the novel I must admit that I can no longer “see” Elio and Oliver without seeing Timothée and Armie. When I happen to reread scenes from the novel I see them, not the characters I’d imagined. When they stop in the piazza one hot noonday, and Elio manages to tell Oliver that he is attracted to him, but says it ever so obliquely, those are the exact same words I’d written down, but they’ve now acquired an inflection I could never have imagined. The same goes for the amazing speech by the father toward the very end of the film: those are the very words I’d written down, but they brought tears to my eyes—they were truer on screen than on paper, I had never imagined the power my words could have through someone else’s medium.

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