HIV and the Plague Years Will Loom Large in 'Call Me by Your Name' Sequel

A sequel to the Oscar-nominated gay romance Call Me by Your Name is becoming less amorphous, with out director Luca Guadagnino discussing potential plot points.

At the Los Angeles Film Critics Awards earlier this month, Guadagnino made clear that he wants to tell another chapter of Elio and Oliver's lives. The director said André Aciman's acclaimed book, upon which his movie is based, devoted its last 40 pages to the characters' futures after that fateful summer they fell in love.

While Aciman's novel took place in 1987, Guadagnino's film was set three years earlier, when HIV wasn't fully embedded in the public's consciousness. Guadagnino sees his sequel exploring how Elio and Oliver react to the growing crisis.

"I think Elio [Timothee Chalamet] will be a cinephile, and I'd like him to be in a movie theater watching Paul Vecchiali's Once More," a 1988 film that dealt with gay love and AIDS, Guadagnino said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "That could be the first scene [in the sequel]... [HIV] is going to be a very relevant part of the story."

A possible Before Sunrise-like series could be developed for the characters, noted the Reporter, with a new film every decade or so.

"In my opinion, Call Me can be the first chapter of the chronicles of the life of these people that we met in this movie, and 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?"

Call Me by Your Name was nominated this week for Best Film, Best Lead Actor for Timothée Chalamet, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Song.