You might not be surprised, then, to emerge from the credits and find yourself in a bucolic northern Italian countryside, with slender Elio looking down from the second-story window of a splendidly dilapidated 17th-century villa at the arrival of an Adonis-like figure he will come to know as Oliver, played by Hammer. It might be pointed out in reply that it was also a great civilization noted for succumbing to decadence and indulgence before exhausting itself and collapsing (and while the popular idea here is partly a cartoon, so are the popular ideas about classical sexuality). The sculptures’ provenance establishes a sunny Mediterranean milieu as well as evoking a world of pre-Christian sexual mores, one often cited for its relatively permissive attitudes toward pederasty. The photographs, artfully strewn as if waiting to be scrapbooked, promise nostalgic reverie the muscular torsos suggest a tasteful celebration of male beauty, though female beauty is not excluded. You would certainly notice that the screen is filled with closeups of photographs of classical statuary: mostly male nudes. The piece, from the first movement of the composer John Adams’ 1996 Hallelujah Junction, is written in what Adams calls “the interlocking style of two-piano writing” (the “junction” of the title), the pianists trading off similar but non-aligned rhythms in a tightly choreographed musical duel, effortlessly weaving in and out from one another. The music, a lilting piece for two pianos, promises a joyous, ecstatic experience - but if, like Chalamet’s character Elio, you had a sufficient musical education, you might pick up more from the selection than that. If you didn’t know that the Best Picture–nominated Call Me By Your Name is an uncritically rapturous celebration of a same-sex relationship between an inexperienced youth played by Timothée Chalamet and an experienced man played by Armie Hammer, you might almost guess it from the opening titles, an arty overture for the film that follows. The seductive distortions of Call Me By Your Name (2017) SDG Original source: Catholic World Report