Culture

Call Me By Your Name wins BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay

By Daniel Megarry

19th February 2018

© Sony Pictures

Call Me By Your Name took home a single award at the BAFTAs this weekend.

Despite being nominated in four categories – and receiving plenty of awards-season buzz upon its release – Luca Guadagnino’s critically-acclaimed same-sex romance won only one award on Sunday night.

James Ivory, writer and producer of Call Me By Your Name, won Best Adapted Screenplay for his adaptation of André Aciman’s original 2007 novel.

The 89-year-old previously won the Adapted Screenplay accolade from the 2018 Writers Guild Awards for his work on the film, and has also been nominated in the same category at the upcoming Oscars.

Related: Here’s why all your criticisms of Call Me By Your Name are wrong

Elsewhere at the BAFTAs, Call Me By Your Name lost Best Film to critics darling Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, while Luca Guadagnino lost Best Director to The Shape of Water’s Guillermo del Toro.

Timothée Chalamet, star of the movie and also the youngest ever actor to be nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars, lost the Leading Actor BAFTA to Gary Oldman for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour.

But while Timothée may have walked away empty handed, his appearance at the BAFTAs won him many new fans and enamoured his existing ones as he helped Ivory onto the stage to accept his award.

https://twitter.com/taychalamet/status/965339104098574337

While Call Me By Your Name may not have performed as well as we’d hoped at the BAFTAs, and it was snubbed entirely at the Golden Globes, we’ve still got hope for the upcoming Oscars on 4 March.

The film is nominated for Best Picture, Best Leading Actor for Timothée Chalamet, Best Adapted Screenplay for James Ivory, and Best Original Song for Sufjan Steven’s Mystery Of Love.

Meanwhile, if you’re finding yourself longing to return to Elio and Oliver’s world, you’ll be pleased to know that a sequel has already been discussed.

Director Luca Guadagnino has suggested he’s got ideas for more than one sequel too, with hopes to set up a shared cinematic universe to follow the lives of Elio and Oliver after that fateful Italian summer in 1983.

Part of the story will definitely involve the AIDS epidemic which tore through the gay community during the 1980s – something that was absent from the Call Me By Your Name novel and film.

“I think it’s going to be a very relevant part of the story,” Guadagnino told The Hollywood Reporter.

“I think Elio will be a cinephile, and I’d like him to be in a movie theatre watching Paul Vecchiali’s Once More. That could be the first scene [in the sequel].”

Once More was the first French film to address the AIDS crisis when it was released in 1988.

As for plans for more than one sequel, Guadagnino touched upon Andre Aciman’s final part of the book which travels through time meeting up with the two characters during different stages of their lives.

“Call Me can be the first chapter,” he explained.

“If the first one is a story of coming of age and becoming a young man, maybe the next chapter will be, what is the position of the young man in the world, what does he want – and what is left a few years later of such an emotional punch that made him who he is?”

Guadagnino initially teased us with a sequel last year when he told Gay Times: “Maybe in time we’ll be able to tell more stories about these people.”

When asked if he’s spoken to the author about a sequel, he added: “I’ve spoken to André about that and, yeah, André is up for it.”

Bring it on!