Call Me by Your Name ★★★★

Actor Timothée Chalamet made an indelible impression in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird as a nonchalant young preener mixed up with Saoirse Ronan’s titular heroine. He may have been too cool for school in Gerwig’s triumph, but based on his tentative, internalized work in Call Me by Your Name, the latest romantic masterpiece from Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (2009’s I Am Love), it’s clear that Chalamet possesses amazing range, and is poised to join Ronan as a breakout star. Based on the acclaimed novel by André Aciman (wonderfully adapted by James Ivory) and set amid the lush green countryside of northern Italy in the summer of 1983, Chalamet plays 17-year-old Elio Perlman. The multilingual musical prodigy enjoys spending lazy days at the Mediterranean cottage of his parents—Annella (Amira Casar), an Italian translator, and Lyle (movingly played by Michael Stuhlbarg), an American archaeology professor specializing in Greco-Roman sculpture—until he forms a fast friendship with Oliver (The Social Network’s Armie Hammer), a chiseled and charming American grad student who arrives on the scene to work on his doctorate, helping out as Lyle’s live-in intern. Friendship soon blooms into hormonal infatuation, however, and the two forge a deeper bond that will shape the lad’s life. Non-judgmental and keenly observed, it’s another of the year’s best films. (At Boston Common and Kendall Square.)