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The first time I got to know Ryan—in Luca's 17th-century apartment in Crema—I realized there was something intangibly different from him that was impossible to describe.
I had met so many talented actors; my first breakthrough was when I did Romeo and Juliet in Manchester—set in 1960s Italy; it seemed all of my important acting gigs were inspired by that place—I acted against the magnificent Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who played Juliet.
The Guardian called our performance "highly kinetic" and "racing along like a hammering heart"; the BBC called my Romeo "angst-ridden, obsessively hair-stroking"—I took that as a compliment.
The point was that talent meant almost nothing in this industry—Gugu couldn't find a job at all—so when I met Ryan I was surprised how humble he was despite his success. His movie grossed 300 million dollars, was in every men's magazine (How to Dress Like Young Joe), every producer wanted him to play the lead of some action movie, and all of this success came at the age of 20.
So when we filmed the last scene of the movie when Elio had a nosebleed and I went by his side and massaged his feet, Ryan still gave the role something new. Ryan did not only become Elio, but through the film you could see Elio changing.
When the movie finished, I could not help but see Ryan as sometimes Elio, either at a party, doing press with him, or when he was at the lowest point of his life. And it was as if I saw an old friend so I welcomed it every time.
I leaned back in my seat and the projector was playing the volleyball scene.
God, I was so much more fit than now.
I grabbed the water from Elio and drank it, my left arm was on his shoulder. I gave him a massage, "You should relax more."
My favourite scene was when Elio came over to dance with me, I was a horrible dancer, it was so embarrassing to shoot but looked really fun in the theatre. I looked around the auditorium and saw journalists, the festival workers, and cinephiles all leaned in and extremely engaged, not a sound heard.
Ryan whispered in my ear, "Are they all getting paid to be engaged?"
I smiled, "Probably, I do not think I can handle another premiere."
He tapped my shoulder, "We have to get used to it."
I shrugged my shoulders and the movie played on with rapt attention.
Eventually, Oliver and Elio went to Elio's favourite place, near the pond where it was private. And I said, my American accent in the film sounded weird to me, "You really that afraid of what I think?"
Elio stepped closer towards me and he looked so different from Ryan that he presented himself publicly. The confident, witty guy doing a late-night interview and the charismatic A-Lister talking to celebrities disappeared into a man that was so young—acting his own age.
I said as Oliver, "Your making things difficult to me."
Elio punched my back and he tried to jump on my back for a piggyback ride, Ryan gave out a loud laugh and crawled lower onto his seat when the people around looked at him.
I smirked, "Your ruining the moment."
"Good."
Me and Elio were lying down on the grass, the sun on our faces, and I remembered how clear the sky was during that.
"I love this, Oliver," Elio said.
"What?"
"Everything." Our voices were so quiet.
There was a brief moment of silence and Oliver turned towards Elio and touched his chin. We shared a slow, intimate kiss.
"Better now?" Oliver smiled.
I didn't know if I pictured it, but the audience did not move at all, even the security guard turned around to the movie.
Elio launched himself on top of Oliver but he said, "No, no, no."
"Why?"
"We should go."
"Why?" Elio looked like a puppy trying to steal the owner's dinner, but the owner kept on ignoring him.
"I know myself. We have been good, we haven't been anything we been ashamed of." Elio grabbed my crotch, "Am I offending you?"
And the audience could see Elio's youth and ignorance, he had only one goal and it was to love Oliver and to show it.
Ryan didn't make any joke and sat there just like the rest of the audience. He looked very serious and was in his own world.
I was in a dreamlike state until I said the line, "Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine."
"Elio," he said.
"Oliver."
We kept repeating it in bed and throughout our sexual activities in the film, I was reminded of how comfortable the set was but how incredibly embarrassing it was for me, for hundreds of people watching it right now.
Tears began to well up in my eyes when Michael Stuhlbarg gave his monologue, "What you two had, had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. You two were lucky to find each other."
He continued, "We rip so much ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty. How you live your life is your business. Remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. And before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. Pain. Don't kill it and with it the joy you felt."
Only the soft piano music played and in the corner of my eye I saw Luca tearing up. The film went black and it showed Crema during the winter.
Oliver rang Elio and told him that he was getting engaged. The parents looked disappointed and I could see the rage and sadness on Ryan's face. And as he stood behind the fireplace, tears in his eyes, I felt so sorry that I caused this.
Everybody else in the auditorium began to look like Elio when "Visions of Gideon" played. The credits rolled side by side to Ryan's face.
"Elio. Elio."
He looked straight at the camera and I was sure that everybody forgot they were watching a movie. It was one of those rare times that art became real life and everybody saw themselves as this young man who had his heart broken.
He went through the emotions and did not try to bury them. He even smiled slightly at the very end of that scene which showed that he also felt happiness of what they had together.
No one moved when the lights turned on.
***
'Call Me by Your Name': Film Review | Capri Hollywood 2012
By Boyd van Hoeij | The Hollywood Reporter
CAPRI — When Luca Guadagnino cast twenty-year-old Ryan Stone as the lead in Call Me by Your Name, the choice might have seemed counterintuitive to anyone only tracking industry trades. At the time, Stone was known for a piercing crying turn in J.C. Chandor's Margin Call and the R-rated sci-fi juggernaut Looper, where his face was buried under heavy prosthetics to mimic Bruce Willis. Yet Guadagnino reportedly saw beneath the genre, detecting a magnetic, melancholic beauty reminiscent of a young Alain Delon in Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers.
Premiering as the opening-night selection at the Capri Hollywood International Film Festival following a relentless autumn of box-office receipts and tabloid headlines, Guadagnino's adaptation of André Aciman's novel proves the director's instinct was spot-on. Shot on warm, granular 35mm by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom over a compressed four-week schedule in Crema, the film belongs heart and soul to Stone, who delivers a revelatory, completely vanity-free performance that announces him as one of the finest actors of his generation.
Set during an endless summer in 1983, James Ivory's screenplay drops us into a 17th-century Lombardy villa. Seventeen-year-old Elio Perlman (Stone) is a bilingual musical prodigy who spends lazy afternoons transcribing classical manuscripts and cycling through empty orchard roads. His solitary, intellectual world is disrupted by Oliver (Andrew Garfield), a twenty-four-year-old American academic interning for Elio's father (Michael Stuhlbarg).
Garfield brings an infectious, loose-limbed swagger to Oliver, shouting an offhand "Later!" that rattles the Perlman household. When he rests a casual, possessive hand on Elio's shoulder during a backyard volleyball match, Garfield injects an easy bravado. But it is Stone who conducts the emotional weather of every scene. Leaner and fragile here, Stone sheds every trace of studio polish to play adolescent infatuation not as sweet romance but as a feverish illness.
Stone's technical commitment is matched by remarkable emotional honesty. Playing the upright piano himself in the villa's sunlit study, Stone turns a musical duel into a masterclass in flirtation, transcribing Bach into the styles of Liszt and Busoni with fluid, arrogant virtuosity. Every look carries subtext; his green eyes betray an agonizing tug-of-war between adolescent superiority and raw terror.
Later, during a noisy outdoor lunch where family elders bicker over Bettino Craxi and Italian politics, Stone's Elio quietly suffers a sudden nosebleed. Retreating into a darkened hallway with a makeshift ice pack, his posture speaks volumes before a single word is uttered. When Garfield's Oliver joins him on the cool tile floor—gently massaging Elio's foot while noticing the boy's kosher pendant—Stone allows Elio's pride to crack into genuine, defenseless intimacy.
While Stuhlbarg offers a magnificent anchor late in the film with an extraordinary, hushed monologue on emotional bankruptcy and wasted grief, the film ultimately hinges on Stone's shoulders.
Guadagnino places total faith in his young star in the devastating final shot. As winter blankets Crema and Sufjan Stevens' "Visions of Gideon" plays over crackling fireplace embers, the camera holds on Stone's face in an unbroken close-up across the end credits. Without speaking, Stone traverses shame, heartbreak, betrayal, and a lingering, hard-won tenderness, letting tears spill over an almost imperceptible smile. It is an astonishing, ego-free piece of screen acting that completely silences the surrounding noise and I look forward to Stone's future work.
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