“I feel like I’m always searching for something, someone.” Haven’t we all felt that at some point in our lives? A sense of displacement from our daily lives, and a search for something that would anchor us to a more commonly perceived sense of normalcy? The Japanese phenomenon “Your Name” (it was the highest grossing film of last year in the country and the highest grossing anime film of all time worldwide, passing “ Spirited Away “) is about this highly relatable sense of looking for something, someone, someplace. And so much more. It’s a beautiful, captivating piece of work that gets off to kind of a rocky start but achieves remarkable momentum toward an emotional, powerful ending. And you won’t see a better-looking animated film all year.
Writer/director Makoto Shinkai takes what could have been a very cheesy “Freaky Friday”-esque concept and imbues it with melancholy and honesty. The set-up is relatively simple: Mitsuha ( Mone Kamishiraishi ) is a high school-age girl who lives in the fictional Itomori, a gorgeous, quaint village in the Hida region of Japan; Taki ( Ryunosuke Kamiki ) is a slightly older boy living in Tokyo. They are both average kids with their own social circles, but they have no actual connection, and lead very different lives, at least partially defined by their equally gorgeous settings of city vs. country.
One day, Taki wakes up and looks down to see breasts. He’s in Mitsuha’s body. The next day, Mitsuha wakes up back in her own form but with only vague memories of the day before. And, of course, the same thing happens in reverse. Mostly through discussions with people around them about how weird they were acting, Mitsuha and Taki figure out that they’re switching places randomly, only after sleep. Rather than get into wacky hijinks like an ‘80s Disney movie, they work to help each other, leaving each other notes and diaries about what happened when they switched places. For example, Mitsuha has the courage to talk to the girl Taki likes, serving as a sort of body-switching Cyrano de Bergerac. But one day, they stop switching, and Taki can’t get a hold of Mitsuha in any way. He has vague memories of vistas from Mitsuha’s life and he sets out to try to find her. This is when “Your Name” becomes something very unexpected.
To say that “Your Name” is visually striking would be a giant understatement. Shinkai and his team have both an eye for detail and a poetic vision. The settings of “Your Name” somehow feel both lived-in and magical at the same time. Whether it’s the train system in Tokyo, its gorgeous skyscrapers touching the sky, a never-ending horizon in Itomori, or even just a series of streets on a mountainside, “Your Name” is one of those animated films in which one could pick any still frame from it and hang it on their wall. And yet the gorgeous visuals of the film never stifle the storytelling; they’re intertwined with one another. “Your Name” seems to often be saying: city or country, it’s a beautiful world out there and we only need to find our place in it.
Shinkai avoids so many potential narrative pitfalls (that it feels like the inevitable live-action remake will tumble into willingly). For one, Mitsuha and Taki maintain gender differences without feeling clichéd in the boy vs. girl way that Hollywood films so often define. We feel like these two very different people find commonality in gender and class without losing their personalities at the same time. The movie reminded me at times of Roger’s famous quote about empathy, about how film has a gift to put us in someone else’s shoes in ways that nothing else does. Mitsuha and Taki would likely never interact in the real world, but they start to become supportive of each other, and essential to each other’s happiness. The idea that someone you’ve never met and would never otherwise interact with has the same needs, joys, and fears as you is something worth remembering in 2017. It reminded me of “ Arrival ” in the way that film takes an out-of-this-world concept and then ties it to issues with which we can all relate.
Most of all, “Your Name” balances fantastic beauty and grounded reality in ways that are simply impossible outside of animation. Shinkai alternates between detailed visions of Tokyo that feel like they were constructed from real location photos and fantastical images of places that don’t exist in the real world, and never skews that balance too far to either side. It becomes more and more impressive. Few animated films in recent memory have built scene upon scene to such a rewarding final shot. Few animated films in recent memory are this good.
Brian Tallerico
Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.
- Masami Nagasawa as Okudera Miki (voice)
- Nobunaga Shimazaki as Fujii Tsukasa (voice)
- Aoi Yuki as Natori Sayaka (voice)
- Tani Kanon as Miyamizu Yotsuba (voice)
- Kaito Ishikawa as Takagi Masahiro (voice)
- Mone Kamishiraishi as Miyamizu Mitsuha (voice)
- Etsuko Ichihara as Miyamizu Hitoha (voice)
- Ryou Narita as Teshigawara Katsuhiko (voice)
- Ryunosuke Kamiki as Tachibana Taki (voice)
- Kazuhiko Inoue as Taki's father (voice)
- Makoto Shinkai
Writer (based on his novel)
Cinematographer, leave a comment, now playing.
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If I told you that Your Name , writer-director Makoto Shinkai 's drama (originally titled Kimi no na wa ), was an amazing anime that is sweeping the world thanks to its unconventional storytelling approach, gorgeous visuals, and tear-jerking romance, there's a good chance you'd only hear one word: anime. The word still carries a stigma today, even though the traditionally Japanese storytelling style has steadily become a part of Western culture over the last few decades. Your Name is poised to be a gateway anime film for a whole new generation.
To be fair, some of the tropes that the anime genre has become known for are at play here: The story centers on two high school characters, the juxtaposition of technology and tradition is a big part of their journey, and the memory of a massively destructive event haunts the collective consciousness. However, these common themes found throughout anime exist in Your Name to serve the story; everything else about it is unique and surprising. This makes for a refreshingly entertaining film that will have you invested in the fate of the charismatic leads as they struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds.
In the broadest sense, Your Name is a story about two high school students, Mitsuha and Taki, who have never met but mysteriously begin to inhabit each other's bodies at random times, for random lengths of time, and with no memory of these events. So on the surface, it's an animated body-swapping comedy with romantic and dramatic elements. But it doesn't take long to realize that there is much, much more going on in Shinkai's excellent adaptation of his own novel of the same name.
Mitsuha Miyamizu is reserved and hard-working, both as a student in school and at her family's shrine, where she learns the ways of tradition from her grandmother, alongside her little sister Yotsuha. The demands of tradition and the rather rural stylings of her small town frustrate Mitsuha to the point that she loudly voices her wish to be reborn as a handsome boy in Tokyo, a city full of culture, innovation, and opportunity.
Enter Taki Tachibana, a high school student living in Tokyo who doggedly pursues his interests, whether it's architecture or the affections of his co-worker, Miki Okudera. However, when Taki wakes up one morning to find himself in the body of Mitsuha--and, yes, after hilariously and rather innocently coming to terms with said new body--he finds himself on a path that is very different from the one he has been planning for all along.
To give too much away about Your Name would be a disservice to audiences as it's best to go into this movie as cold as possible. It's much more than a body-swapping comedy; though that aspect is played up for laughs early on, it becomes crucial to the depths of the mutual understanding between Mitsuha and Taki by the story's end. And neither is Your Name only a traditional romantic story about two star-crossed lovers; those elements are there, as is the legend of the Red String of Fate connecting those destined to be together, but relationships develop slowly over time and are born out of understanding and compassion rather than simply overcoming a one-note conflict.
While Your Name does come with the obvious supernatural element of body-swapping, there's a much deeper mythology at play that touches on the contrast between technology and tradition in the film. This is what Your Name does exceptionally well: Introduce a familiar concept or trope, and then flip, twist, and invert it in surprising ways that will keep the audience guessing. You may see some of the twists coming, you might even guess the ultimate ending, but Your Name remains an engaging story throughout and will have you emotionally invested in the fate of the fully fleshed out characters.
On that note, Shinkai's attention to detail and understanding of fans' obsession with character relationships is top notch. Viewers who keep an eye on supporting characters and their flirtations throughout the film will be rewarded with a rock-solid answer to their relationship by the movie's end, though the nature of that relationship may or may not please everyone. As for the relationship between the leads, Shinkai knows just how far to push an audience's patience for the "will they or won't they" game, and you can tell he's having fun teasing it along the way. Those slight sins are wholly forgiven since Shinkai also delivers one of the most earnest, intimate, and admirable romances in recent movie history.
And this is all without mentioning the breathtaking visuals on display, from the Tokyo cityscapes, to rural and urban train stations (another hallmark of anime), to lush and impressive natural landscapes, most of which are inspired by real-world locations . The character designs are charming and practical, far from the over-the-top appearances you might expect when hearing the word "anime." Heightening every emotional beat in the film is the fantastic soundtrack--which is destined to become a playlist in its own right--that occasionally breaks through to become the focus of a scene or sequence. It's honestly amazing to me that all the disparate parts of this film came together so well to make something this unforgettable; to miss it is inexcusable.
Your Name is a wonderful cinematic experience. You don't need to be an anime fan to enjoy Your Name , just like you don't need to understand the historical and cultural significance of kuchikamizake to appreciate its place in the plot (though a familiarity with anime history and Japanese culture certainly helps). At the end of the day, Your Name is a timeless crowd-pleaser that will have you laughing, crying, and loving right along with Mitsuha and Taki for years to come.
Your Name opens in theaters, in limited release, starting Friday, April 7th.
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James earl jones, authoritative actor and voice of darth vader, dies at 93, ‘you name’ (‘kimi no na wa’): film review | tokyo 2016.
Two body-swapping teens face an eco-disaster in 'Your Name,' Makoto Shinkai’s runaway anime hit.
By Deborah Young
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A shoo-in for highest-grossing anime film of 2016 and a challenger to some of Studio Ghibli’s finest box-office results, Your Name ( Kimi no Na wa ) by up-and-coming Japanese animation director Makoto Shinkai is one wild ride of a film. The paradoxical sci-fi fantasy, whose story is engaging enough if finally incomprehensible, should spark an internet war of interpretations from the teen audiences who are its main target. In brief, it tells the story of a Tokyo boy and a schoolgirl from the sticks who begin having unplanned out-of-body experiences — in each other’s body, to be precise — just as a comet is passing over Japan. Their attempts to remember each other’s name when they return to their own bodies and to physically meet up turns into a bittersweet, impossible romance laced with humor and mystical innuendo.
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Meanwhile, the looming eco-disaster that energizes the last part of the film revives the lingering trauma of Japan’s 2011 tsunami and earthquake. Shinkai , who also wrote and edited the pic , heaps a lot on the plate of hungry animation fans.
The Bottom Line A dreamy, entertaining narrative puzzle.
First-rate Japanese anime is a taste that anyone can acquire in the time it takes to watch a film like this, and it should confirm Shinkai’s reputation to genre-lovers around the world, who know his poetry-inspired The Garden of Words . Released in Japan in late August, Your Name has already grossed close to $150 million domestically and won the top animation award at Sitges , as well as being featured at the San Sebastian, Busan , Tokyo and London fests . It has been picked up by FUNimation in the U.S.
But for all its entertaining novelty, it is still many steps behind the magic, penetrating insights and profound humanity of the Japanese anime pantheon lead by Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Hosoda . The quest of the film’s odd couple, Taki and Mitsuha , simply doesn’t stir the heart. Perhaps it’s their independence from a family backstory that makes them seem so abstract. And that’s not counting the storyline, which makes little sense.
The beauty of the feature lies in its ability to stir the imagination with eerie, resonant hand-drawn animation, like the opening sequence of streaking missiles penetrating the clouds and falling through the sky like fireworks. These turn out to be fragments of a comet that is passing very close to the Earth, over the Japanese countryside where Mitsuha (voiced by Mone Kamishiraishi ) lives with her grandmother in a charming small town built around a lake. Mitsuha isn’t terribly interested in the local traditions and rituals that pervade the place, and dreams of moving to Tokyo with all a big city can offer.
Taki’s life ( Ryunosuke Kamiki ) unfolds in Tokyo with his school chums and his after-school job as a waiter. One day, out of the blue, he wakes up in the morning to find himself in Mitsuha’s body. His shock at having breasts, which he can’t stop touching, brings a smile, like his confused attempt to fit in with her school life.
At the same time, Mitsuha wakes up in Taki’s male body and dreads going to the bathroom. She finds herself racing to keep up with all the appointments and duties listed on his cellphone . Her feminine side shines through to good effect on a sophisticated older girl Taki has a crush on. Where Taki is awkward and tongue-tied around her, his stand-in Mitsuha is warm and relaxed, winning him a date.
Both of them imagine they are dreaming and will soon wake up, which they do several times in the course of the film. They exchange bodies over and over again, until they finally catch on to the strange, inexplicable switch that is happening.
Given that Mitsuha’s world is old-fashioned and timeless, the viewer’s first hypothesis might be that this is a reincarnation story, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. Particularly when it turns out that Mitsuha is living three years in the past compared to Taki , before a disaster destroyed her town and many of its inhabitants. At this point all bets are off, and the story swings into urgent heroic mode as Taki and Mitsuha work across time and space to avert the calamity. As sci-fi readers know, it’s not easy to change the past with future knowledge, but they give it their best shot before the film starts to get lost in multiple endings.
At the same time, the two young people are falling in love with each other, but can’t devise a way to meet, since when they wake up in their own homes and bodies they have no clear memory of the other. The pic’s beautiful final scene in Tokyo poignantly plays on this cosmic paradox and offers some tentative closure.
Teaming with Shinkai is animation director Masashi Ando, who worked on many Studio Ghibli classics. Shinkai’s familiar ultra-realistic backgrounds of buildings and cityscapes could almost pass for photography, were they not always moving around in peculiar ways. Giving the story a contemporary, at times annoyingly conventional beat is the music of Yojiro Noda and his popular J-rock bank Radwimps .
Venue: Tokyo Film Festival (Japan Now) U.S. Distributor: FUNimation Entertainment Production companies: A FUNimation Entertainment release of a CoMix Wave Films Cast: Ryunosuke Kamikim Mone Kamishiraishi , Ryo Narita , Aoi Yuki, obunaga Shimazaki , Kaito Ishikawa , Kanon Tani , Masaki Terasoma Director-screenwriter-editor: Makoto Shinkai Producers: Noritaka Kawaguchi , Genki Kawamura Animation director: Masashi Ando Character designer: Masayoshi Tanaka Music: Radwimps World sales: Toho Co.
Not rated, 106 minutes
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Review | Your Name (Kimi no na wa)
Your Name (Kimi no na wa)
| Director | Makoto Shinkai |
| Writer(s) | Makoto Shinkai |
| Rating | 12A |
| Release Date | 2016 |
What’s this?
Your Name is a Japanese animated fantasy; humorous, romantic, captivating and utterly beautiful.
It starts off as a light body-swap comedy… And then about a third of the way through, the tone of the story changes and the scope opens right up, unexpectedly.
Your Name is not a Studio Ghibli anime, but just as good as the best of them.
So it’s a body-swap comedy like Freaky Friday , or something?
Might sound odd, but the body swap thing itself is not the main focus: it’s a device for a story that expands into finding a soulmate and the human impact of a disaster. Really! Watch it, you’ll see.
Taki (a young city guy, voiced by Ryûnosuke Kamiki) and Mitsuha (a country girl, voiced by Mone Kamishiraishi) find that when they dream they sometimes get to experience the other’s life. At first, it does seem just like a dream, but they soon put two and two together, and work out that they really are in each other’s bodies during that period. It all gets rather interesting when something bad happens in Mitsuha’s town, which means the switching ceases… But Taki has grown fond of her – albeit from a distance – and becomes determined to help.
So Your Name (Kimi no na wa) is not a kids’ film?
You’re right, you can’t always tell with animation; and the 12a just means there’s nothing inappropriate for kids, but not that it’s truly meant for them, as such.
In this case, it’s not terribly clear-cut who the intended audience is, and actually that’s the film’s main flaw: It’s a little too sophisticated for children to watch without asking questions, but the treatment of opposite-genered bodies in the swap is so pedestrian (the jokes no more raunchy than those in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ) that it surely wasn’t written for adults.
Maybe the pop music soundtrack indicates Your Name was written for adolescents (indeed, the teenage issues are dealt with in a similar style – though not quite as much depth – as in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time , which almost certainly was written with adolescents in mind) or maybe it’s for everyone; it may have found a market in this country a bit more easily if that was clear. That said, my son (aged ten) and I loved it for the same reasons: captivating story, humorous and emotional writing, and animation – nay, art! – you can get swept away in.
Sounds fabulous!
It is… Indeed when I asked my son why he liked it, that was the word he used: “because of the fabulous animation,” he said. “Good story, and it was funny too, but mostly the animation.”
For a lot of the time, the animation wasn’t just beautiful, but also strikingly realistic; yet I couldn’t have known just how realistic until I read an article when I was preparing this review. It turns out some of the specific real-life locations are very clearly identifiable from their animated counterparts. I guess this helps Japanese viewers relate to the story if they can imagine being there: in contrast, it made me want to go there, as I got sucked into the story straight away.
So I guess it was popular in Japan, if the filmmaker got all that right?
Not half! Your Name brought in more than 10 billion yen at the box office, which is a first for any non-Studio Ghibli animation. Not only that but the theme song by Radwimps (a four-member pop band) “Zenzenzense (movie ver.)” was confirmed as 2017’s most sung anime song karaoke!
And get this: JJ Abrams has committed to a live-action remake…
I know: let’s hope this one is done with more sensitivity than Ghost in the Shell , not to mention Death Note . And don’t get me started on The Ring !
And in case Mr. Abrams is reading this (or one of the staff he listens to; that would do), there’s a lot more to cultural sensitivity than just the ethnic background of the characters and cast… I’m thinking of two particular areas in the case of Your Name :
- The film doesn’t dwell much on the gender difference between Taki and Mitsuha during their switches; but it does focus A LOT on the contrast between their two homes. The country house and village are highly traditional, in terms of buildings, food, clothing, furniture, everything. And the city setting is definitely Tokyo (bear in mind what I’ve already said about the realistic presentation of places).
- Philosophical and spiritual ideas and customs form an important backdrop to some parts of the film; indeed there is a pivotal plot device that would not take place without the beliefs surrounding a sake ceremony.
So, Mr. Abrams: please tread carefully. Makoto Shinkai deserves to have his reputation still intact when his name becomes more well known to Western audiences. He’s already wary of the number of people that have seen this film and had apparently said – out of modesty – that he doesn’t want Miyazake to see Your Name , because of its flaws. Please don’t make him regret making such a powerful film.
Recommendation?
Whatever your tastes or interests, if you have access to Amazon Prime, watch Your Name. If you have an issue with subtitles, the dubbed version is perfectly fine.
Please watch it, and – whether you’re new to anime or not – there will be lots to enjoy and appreciate; and it may well open you up to other films you wouldn’t normally consider.
I’ll be watching out for more Shinkai films becoming available over here.
Article by Alix Turner
Alix joined Ready Steady Cut back in 2017, bringing their love for horror movies and nasty gory films. Unsurprisingly, they are Rotten Tomatoes Approved, bringing vast experience in film critiquing. You will likely see Alix enjoying a bloody horror movie or attending a genre festival.
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‘Your Name’ Review: Makoto Shinkai’s Anime Stunner Deserves Its Unexpected Oscar Buzz
David ehrlich.
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Makoto Shinkai , the rising Japanese animator whose heartbreaking, hyper-saturated films marry the delicate beauty of Hayao Miyazaki with the workaday wistfulness of Yasujirō Ozu, has always gravitated towards stories that take place in the space between people.
His breathtaking 22-minute breakthrough, a homemade project called “Voices of a Distant Star,” lucidly illustrated Shinkai’s preoccupation with distance and how the immediacy of modern communication has had the perverse effect of clarifying our isolation from one another. Effectively a more compelling (and much more compact) anime precursor to “Interstellar,” the 2002 short traces a high school crush as it’s stretched across the length of an intergalactic war — the boy stays on Earth and the girl goes off to fight aliens in the farthest reaches of space, but their feelings for one another are soon contorted by the cruelty of relative time.
READ MORE: Makoto Shinkai’s ‘Your Name’ Joins Studio Ghibli Classics As One Of Japan’s Biggest Anime Films Ever
That short didn’t just launch Shinkai’s career, it also anticipated the obsessions that would define it. Whether drawing lovestruck teenagers who move to opposite sides of Japan (“5 Centimeters Per Second”) or a girl who embarks on a journey into the land of the dead (“Children Who Chase Lost Voices”), each of the half-dozen films that Shinkai has made in the 14 years since has focused on young people who are consumed by the ache of separation. Young people like Mitsuha, the small-town schoolgirl at the heart of “ Your Name ,” who’s yet to sleep with anyone but already sees the world as something of a shared dream.
The scale of Shinkai’s work may have increased a bit since he made “Voices of a Distant Star” on a Power Mac G4 in his house — in addition to the Oscar buzz that followed its Los Angeles Film Critics Association prize as the year’s best animated film, “Your Name” is on its way towards becoming highest-grossing anime film of all time — but he’s still searching for a way to fill the gaps between his characters, diminishing returns be damned.
This is Shinkai’s largest film to date (less epic than some of his others, but more expansive), and while very few animators in the world are capable of making anything so smart or emotionally vivid, a bigger canvas seldom makes it easier to find what you’re looking for. Based on Shinkai’s own novel of the same name and reframing his usual fixations through the lens of Japanese history, “Your Name” is an unclassifiable experience that starts like a hormonal riff on “Freaky Friday,” morphs into an apocalyptic version of “Portrait of Jennie,” and somehow manages to layer a gender-swapping 12th century tale over the ongoing trauma of 3/11 in the meantime. If only it weren’t every bit as messy as it sounds.
Tired of her life the sun-kissed, lakeside town of Itomori, Mitsuha wishes that she could be a handsome Tokyo boy instead (that the movie doesn’t question this is one of its charms). Taki is a boy, and he lives in Tokyo, but it’s hard to gauge the handsomeness of an animated teenager who seems defined more by his awkwardness than anything else. One day, in the aftermath of a celestial event, the two strangers temporarily swap bodies — lots of blushing self-examination naturally ensues.
READ MORE: How Body-Switching Anime ‘Your Name’ Became An Oscar Contender
As this phenomenon continues to happen and the two distant high schoolers soon figure out what’s going on, they begin to leave messages for one another (by writing on their arms) and meddling in each other’s love lives. It’s only a matter of time before Taki and Mitsuha think to meet up, but they always seem to miss each other as though through an error of depth-perception. Silly but lined with sadness, Shinkai’s uncharacteristically frivolous yarn is braided like the kumihimo cords at Itomori’s Shinto shrine until, without warning, Taki is dumped back into his body, and left to wonder what happened to the one girl who knew him inside and out.
“Your Name” hinges on a series of seismic revelations, but they don’t twist the plot so much as the depressurize it. Suddenly, all of the melancholy that Shinkai had been keeping to the periphery rushes towards the center, like water bursting in through a shattered porthole. After an elegantly structured first half that weaves together disparate voiceovers and uses any number of clever visual devices to illustrate the ways in which disparate lives can resonate through one another, the literalness of the film’s final hour proves too constricting for Shinkai’s ideas (and it doesn’t help that he strands with the less interesting of his teenage leads).
Not that your eyes will mind. While the broad character animations feel like a concession compared to the colder designs of Shinkai’s previous work, there’s still more to gawk at in any single frame of this film than there is in the entirety of “Frozen.” And “Your Name” only gets more beautiful as it grows more grandiose, as every lonely train ride and periwinkle sunset glistens with the bittersweet glow of regret. Like all of Shinkai’s films, the richness of the light coats everything it touches with such an evocative hue of nostalgia that the plot only puts a damper on things (and there’s a lot of plot here). Watching these colors bleed between Taki and Mitsuha’s divergent lives is all you need to appreciate the beauty of being in this world together, and the tragedy of how that same beauty always seems to slip through our fingers. Even Shinkai has struggled to hold on to it, but it’s always at least a little stunning to watch him try.
Funimation will release “Your Name” in 2017.
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Your Name (Japan, 2016)
Your Name ’s first half is magical. There’s a richness of human comedy and whimsy in the way Mitsuha and Taki navigate their day-to-day lives without knowing in whose body they will awaken. Taki’s curiosity about “his” breasts creates one of many lighthearted moments and the ways in which the pair communicate – and learn to love one another – is presented with economy and a deftness of touch. Your Name loses some of that clarity and appeal during its second half as mystical and quasi-science fiction elements creep in. The travel back-and-forth between Tokyo and Itomori and Mitsuha’s attempts to avert disaster feel like unnecessary distractions incorporated to add “action” to an otherwise contemplative film. Some plot elements – specifically the means by which Mitsuha and Taki are able to communicate face-to-face – are a little confusing.
Despite Your Name ’s success in Japan and at international film festivals, it received only a perfunctory North American release and was largely unavailable to U.S. audiences until it debuted on DVD. The home video version offers both the original Japanese version with subtitles and an English dub. The latter, despite (or perhaps because of) not featuring any well-known names, is significantly better than any of the Miyazaki dubs and Radwimps (credited with the music) recorded English-language versions of the songs. Regardless of how you watch it, however, Your Name is worth the time. Plot hiccups aside, it’s a visually impressive experience with endearing characters and a unique story.
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Where to Watch
Rent Your Name on Apple TV, or buy it on Apple TV.
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As beautifully animated as it is emotionally satisfying, Your Name adds another outstanding chapter to writer-director Makoto Shinkai's filmography.
Critics Reviews
Audience reviews, cast & crew.
Makoto Shinkai
Michael Sinterniklaas
Taki Tachibana
Stephanie Sheh
Mitsuha Miyamizu
Miki Okudera
Glynis Ellis
Hitoha Miyamizu
Kyle Hebert
Katsuhiko Teshigawara
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Table of contents
What is your name about, 1. the first comet strikes, 2. mitsuha’s mother passes away, 3. mitsuha performs the kuchikamizake ritual, 4. mitsuha’s body switch, 5. mitsuha finds taki, 6. the comet strikes again, 7. taki’s body switch, 8. taki learns about itomori, 9. taki visits the shrine, 10. taki tries to save mitsuha, 11. taki and mitsuha meet, 12. mitsuha saves itomori, 13. taki and mitsuha forget, 14. years pass, 15. taki and mitsuha find each other, explaining what the first comet strike means, explaining the miyamizu family’s spiritual abilities, explaining the red yarn thread and the kuchikamizake ritual, explaining the logic of mitsuha and taki’s body switching, explaining how taki restarts the body switching with mitsuha, explaining how tasogare-doki allows mitsuha and taki to finally meet, japan and natural disaster.
Several fragments of a comet fall through the sky. Most of them won’t collide with Earth, but one breaks off and hurtles directly towards the town of Itomori. Soon, everybody there will be vanquished. The parents, the children, the teachers, the politicians, the businessmen will all be gone.
And that includes Mitsuha Miyamizu.
During these opening moments of Your Name (Kimi no Na wa) , we don’t realize Mitsuha is going to lose her life. All we know is that Mitsuha and Taki Tachibana, despite not knowing each other and being miles away from one another, have somehow bonded over this celestial event that has captivated Japan. Together, they recite these opening lines:
“Once in a while when I wake up, I find myself crying. The dream I must have had I can never recall. But the sensation that I’ve lost something lingers for a long time after I wake up. I’m always searching for something, for someone. This feeling has possessed me I think from that day when the stars came falling. It was almost as if a scene from a dream. Nothing more, nothing less than a beautiful view.”
Immediately, Your Name opens with a cryptic, ambiguous scene—a trend that will continue throughout. Despite its charm, success, and visceral power, Your Name has a very convoluted story that’s difficult to grasp, that has left many wondering if it’s a mess of a movie that doesn’t work.
I’ve spent hours cycling through the questions people have posted about this movie, and yes indeed, there is PLENTY of crazy stuff to explain (which I’ll do) in this movie. But before I get into explaining the plot of Your Name , let’s remember that opening quote from Mitsuha and Taki and what it represents. Because understanding the movie’s intentions will help shape how we make sense of its complicated parts.
I think it’s very easy to get wrapped up in the logic of Your Name ’s narrative. Naturally, you want to pick apart every story development and plot hole to find out if the story’s foundation is sound. If a moment steps outside the movie’s logical structure? It triggers something in your brain. You start to focus on plot details, like how the Red String of Fate functions, or how Mitsuha’s and Taki’s realities could possibly intersect when they live three years apart, or how drinking kuchikamizake connects the two.
Essentially, you could become so enraptured with what all those elements represent on a rational level that we ignore the emotional core. So while many people on the Internet have attempted to explain the coherence of the plot, I think it’s essential to also include the human elements of the story. Like, what does this movie say about you and me? About the experience of finding love?
And our key insight into what Your Name is about? That quote from the beginning of the movie. Right off the bat, we’re introduced to two people who feel a connection to someone else…but don’t know who that someone is. There’s an emptiness both Taki and Mitsuha feel. There’s something missing. They are incomplete. They are, in that quote, expressing their desire to find their better half.
To find love.
Mitsuha and Taki’s description of what they feel when those comets fall through the sky isn’t specific, or logical, or definite—it’s ambiguous, and cryptic, and enigmatic. Love isn’t something you can explain, but it’s something you feel . And Your Name treats that feeling as an ethereal one. Love is not bound by space or time, but instead by the individuals who are inextricably connected no matter where they are.
I think this is an important mindset to have heading into a plot explanation of the movie. Because while all of the confusing plot elements of Your Name can be explained, I believe they gain power and even more meaning when we can connect those explanations to Mitsuha and Taki’s desire to find love—a feeling we can all empathize with.
A quick plot summary of Your Name
Part of the confusion people have with Your Name is it’s structure. Because Mitsuha exists three years behind Taki, and because the movie randomly jumps between those time periods, the story doesn’t flow in chronological order. Many times it can feel like Your Name is purposely leaving out information to trip you up.
But I PROMISE: all of the details are there. And I think the movie’s plot can be much better understood if we lay out all of its main components in chronological order.
Below is a timeline of the movie’s event in jpg form. You can use this for a bare-bones explanation of Your Name ’s plot. I’ll also list all of this out in text form below the image if you’d rather read it that way.
The rest of the article will go into much more detail on each part of the timeline.
Hundreds of years ago, a comet struck Earth and created the lake that Itomori now rests upon.
After the passing of Mitsuha and Yotsuha’s mother, their father becomes detached from them and engrossed with politics. Their grandmother takes over parenting.
Mitsuha and Yotsuha perform a ritual and create kuchikamizake, which they offer to their god at a shrine. She wishes to be a handsome Tokyo boy.
Mitsuha randomly wakes up as Taki, who lives three years in the future. This switch continues on random days for several weeks.
Mitsuha tracks Taki down in Tokyo. Before being pushed out of the train, she manages to throw her red yarn bracelet to him.
A fragment of another passing comet strikes Itomori. Taki watches from afar, while Mitsuha is vanquished.
Taki now randomly wakes up in Mitsuha’s body in an alternate timeline three years before she passes away.
Taki decides to go looking for Mitsuha. He learns that she was from Itomori, which was destroyed by the comet three years earlier.
Taki visits the shrine he remembers from his time in Mitsuha’s body. He drinks the kuchikamizake. He then goes back in time and wakes up in Mitsuha’s body on the day the comet is set to strike Itomori.
Taki enlists help from Mitsuha’s friends to get everyone out of Itomori before the comet strikes.
At “tasogare-doki”, a time of day when different worlds blur together, Taki and Mitsuha switch back to their bodies and meet at the shrine. Taki gives Mitsuha her red yarn bracelet back, severing their connection.
Mitsuha travels back to Itomori and saves almost everybody.
Because Mitsuha never passed away, she and Taki now exist in present day. But because Taki gave Mitsuha back her red yarn, they forget one another.
As the years go by, both Taki and Mitsuha can’t shake the feeling that something (or someone) is missing from their lives.
Taki and Mitsuha pass by one another on the train. They feel a connection and chase after each other. Finally, they meet, and each ask for the other’s name.
A detailed plot summary of Your Name
Now we’ll go through each of those events in more detail. By thinking about the movie in chronological order—as opposed to the jumbled order we experience when watching Your Name —I think we’ll be able to find a lot of answers to a lot of questions.
It’s important to start from the beginning—like, the very beginning . Hundreds (or maybe even thousands?) of years before Mitsuha and Taki existed, a comet struck Earth.
It could be that two different comets struck Earth at two different points in time, but I’ll assume that, based on what happens to present-day Itomori, that the first comet split into several fragments as well. One of those fragments created the lake that Itomori would one day rest upon, and the other established a crater that houses the Miyamizu Shrine.
Even though the first comet isn’t given much attention in the movie, I think it’s important to address that first comet, as I think it shares both a divine and a metaphorical connection with the future comet that will destroy Itomori.
Think of the first comet splitting into two parts as a severed connection between two people—this is a key metaphor for the love shared between Mitsuha and Taki. The bond those two comet fragments share creates an otherworldly link between the lake and the shrine, and Mitsuha and Taki must use that connection to save Itomori from the future comet.
Early in Mitsuha and her sister Yotsuha’s childhood, their mother Futaba passed away. We learn this later in the movie when Taki visits the shrine.
From Taki’s vision, we learn that the death of Mitsuha’s mother devastated Mitsuha’s father, Toshiki. Blaming himself for not being able to save her, he becomes detached from the Miyamizu family and its traditions. One of those traditions was visiting their god at the Miyamizu Shrine. In effect, he abandons the Miyamizu family, leaving his daughters to be cared for by their grandmother and Futaba’s mother, Hitoha.
We later learn from Hitoha that all of the women in Miyamizu family line have spiritual ties with random people (which explains the link Mitsuha shares with Taki). However, for both Hitoha and Futaba, those connections faded over time and eventually became hazy memories. Essentially, nobody has ever come as close to meeting their spiritual partner as Mitsuha came to meeting Taki.
This is interesting, because it raises the question: was Toshiki actually “the one” for Futaba? Was Toshiki the person she shared a spiritual connection with? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the person you share a spiritual connection with doesn’t have to be your “soul mate”, but instead someone you simply share a deep bond with.
More importantly, though, this reveals the film’s underlying obsession about the consequence of abandoning tradition. In Hitoha’s mind, respecting traditions and rituals are important, even when you don’t understand them. She breeds that attitude in Mitsuha, but is unable to have Toshiki carry on with the Miyamizu customs. So even if Toshiki was Futaba’s spiritual connection, the fact that he abandons Miyamizu traditions keeps him from re-establishing his connection with her—unlike Taki, who visits the Miyamizu Shrine and retains his connection with Mitsuha even after she passes away.
I think this information about the Miyamizu family exposes a celestial link between the first comet and the second comet. The first comet created the shrine that the Miyamizu family uses to pray to their gods. And in that shrine, the Miyamizu women perform a ritual where they leave “half” of themselves to the gods by creating kuchikamizake—a rice-based alcohol that uses human saliva as a fermentation starter. That other half then connects with someone else after you perform a ceremony.
This gives the Miyamizu family’s mystical abilities an actual purpose. These spiritual connections existed for generations so that, eventually, someone would be able to alert the Miyamizus about the second incoming comet (or at least some sort of future danger). This is why Hitoha wouldn’t allow Toshiki to tear Mitsuha and Yotsuha from family traditions—Hitoha understood the importance of leaving these customs intact. Which is why Hitoha has her granddaughters perform a ceremony where they make kuchikamizake and twine a red yarn thread.
During the ceremony where Mitsuha creates kuchikamizake, she dances with a piece of red yarn.
Mitsuha’s grandmother explained the significance of the red yarn that Mitsuha was twining just before the ceremony:
“Listen to the thread’s voice. When you keep twining like that, emotions will eventually start flowing between you and the thread. One thousand years of Itomori’s history is etched into our braided cords. Two hundred years ago, sandal maker Mayugoro’s bathroom caught on fire and burned down this whole area. That shrine and old documents were destroyed, and this is known as (The Great Fire of Mayugoro). So the meaning of the festivals became unknown and only the form lived on. But even if the words are lost, tradition should be handed down. That’s the important task we at Miyamizu Shrine have.”
A couple things to take away from that quote.
First, on a plot level, this information tells us quite a bit. The Miyamizu family used to know a lot more about their abilities, but everything was destroyed by The Great Fire of Mayugoro. Which means their “knowledge” has continued to pass down through the traditions and rituals they perform. So while the Miyamizu women have continued to experience spiritual connections with other people, they’ve never known what the connections mean or how to act upon them (which is why they eventually just become “hazy memories”).
It just so happens that the second comet strike occurs during the annual festival. To me, this means that the festival was always meant to serve as a warning of the second comet. Perhaps the festival took place on the anniversary of the first comet strike? Perhaps it was always known the second comet would strike, and that knowledge was passed down from generation to generation? Who knows. All we know is that that information was likely destroyed in the Great Fire.
And second, we gain some insight into Mitsuha’s character.
Her grandma says, “When you keep twining like that, emotions will eventually start flowing between you and the thread. One thousand years of Itomori’s history is etched into our braided cords.” Mitsuha forms some sort of ethereal connection with Itomori’s history when creating that thread. She becomes one with its past and its future—she becomes one with her home. And because she’s given the red yarn thread to Taki, she’s capable of maintaining this connection with her home even when she’s dead.
Building a life with someone means inviting them into your home, into your life, and then building a new home and life with them. So when she hands that thread to Taki later in the movie, she’s not just creating a spiritual link—she’s offering half of herself to someone she shares a bond with.
Ah, young love!
While performing the kuchikamizake ceremony, Mitsuha’s classmates make fun of her. Embarrassed, Mitsuha runs away from the ceremony and screams, “Please make me a handsome Tokyo boy in my next life!”
Remember: the kuchikamizake represents “half” of Mitsuha, and the red yarn carries with it Mitsuha’s connection with Itomori. The ceremony then triggers the connection between Mitsuha and Taki. Because Taki is three years in the future when Mitsuha is dead, the body switching then becomes Mitsuha’s “next life.”
SIDE NOTE: A lot of questions have been raised about how Mitsuha never realized she was three years in the future, or how Taki never realized he was three years in the past. Of course it’s never explained in the movie, but I think there are plenty of simple explanations for why this happens:
- First and foremost, please remember: THEY ARE SWITCHING BODIES. That would make any normal person go insane…which makes me think you probably wouldn’t notice that the day you think it is (say, August 22, 2013) isn’t the day it actually is (August 22, 2016).
- To repeat a point from above: I don’t think it’s super unreasonable to never check what year it is? 2013 looks like 2016, if you ask me. I mean, how often do you see the current year printed somewhere, or have to write down the year? Maybe if you’re writing a check or something. But I don’t think it’s that crazy for neither Mitsuha or Taki—who are, once again, VERY DISTRACTED BY THE FACT THEY’RE IN ANOTHER PERSON’S BODY—to not really worry about if it’s the same year.
- One last point: what if they DID know they were three years apart? That’s never stated in the movie, but it also might not be relevant information to them. That would only be important to Taki if he knew Mitsuha was from Itomori (he didn’t), and if he knew Itomori had been destroyed by the comet (he didn’t).
SECOND SIDE NOTE: There’s also confusion about how Taki never realizes Mitsuha lives in a town called Itomori…I wish I had a good explanation for that one! Seems hard to defend. The only defense, I guess, is that body switching is a stressful event, and he had other things on his mind than checking what town he’s in?
Even after the body switching ends (that’s why they both start crying when they wake up), Taki remembers Mitsuha. He can picture her face. He can sketch her hometown so well from memory that people recognize it as Itomori. Even though Mitsuha is dead, Taki’s connection with her remains—all because of that red yarn thread.
Remember: that thread carries with it Mitsuha’s connection with Itomori. So when Taki returns to where the town once stood, he knows to return to the shrine where Mitsuha left her kuchikamizake.
Also remember: Mitsuha created the kuchikamizake, but it was Taki in Mitsuha’s body that offered the kuchikamizake in the Miyamizu Shrine.
When Taki arrives at the shrine in Mitsuha’s body, Mitsuha’s grandma says:
“In exchange for returning to this world, you must leave behind what is most important to you—the kuchikamizake. You’ll offer it inside the god’s body. It’s half of you.”
So Taki isn’t leaving behind half of himself, but the half of Mitsuha that Mitsuha had created with the kuchikamizake. This is what severs his body switching days with Mitsuha.
But back in the future where Mitsuha is dead, Taki is in his own body when he visits the shrine and drinks the kuchikamizake. This re-establishes the body switching and allows Taki—who then inhabits Mitsuha’s body the day of the comet strike—to save Itomori.
I believe this to be a poignant commentary on love. Even when someone is gone…they’re never truly gone from your life. You remember how they move, how they talk, how they act. And I think that Taki’s passion for finding someone he shared such an intense bond with represents how that kind of love can transcend time and space.
The climactic moment of Your Name is when Taki and Mitsuha finally meet. You might wonder how their bodies are suddenly able to transcend time and space to meet in the same spot, but this meeting was actually set up much earlier in the movie.
The first day after the body switching, Mitsuha wakes up in her body with no recollection of the previous day. Everybody keeps talking about how strange she was acting. And while she’s trying to piece everything together, she looks down in her notebook and reads a message from Taki: “Who are you?”
In a movie called Your Name …I mean, c’mon. This is an important moment, right? It’s the first instance of Taki and Mitsuha trying to figure out who the other is. The question isn’t necessarily “What is your name?” but instead “Why have I formed this strange connection with you?”
It just so happens that while Mitsuha is reading this message from Taki, her teacher is explaining the meaning of “tasogare-doki”.
“‘Tasokare’ means ‘who is that’ and is the origin of the word ‘tasogare-doki’. Twilight, when it’s neither day nor night. When the world blurs and one might encounter something not human.”
She then has an interaction with a student that you may not have caught, or may not have thought much of—but it’s important:
Teacher: “Old expressions include ‘karetaso-doki’. Karetaso/Kawatare = Who is that and ‘karetaso-doki.’”
Student: “Question! Why not ‘kataware-doki’?”
Teacher: “Kataware-doki? I think that’s a local dialect. I’ve heard that Itomori’s elderly still use classical language. We’re in the boonies, after all.”
When Taki and Mitsuha finally meet, their bodies travel through time to finally converge in the same time and space. This occurs at twilight (aka tasogare-doki) when their worlds blur together. Even though they’re three years apart, the connection between the first comet and the second comet that destroyed Itomori has allowed for two different timelines to merge—the world with Itomori, and the world without Itomori.
And that interaction the teacher shared with the student shows that tasogare-doki has carried different translations with it throughout time. The old expression, kataware-doki, is a “classical” language, meaning it was a term used often by elderly members of the community.
So why would the term kataware-doki be so prevalent at one time? Remember: that term is a local dialect. And it was substituted for tasogare-doki, indicating it had a similar meaning: a combination of “who is that” and the time of day when worlds blur together. At one time, the idea of different timelines merging was so important to the people of Itomori that they created their own word for it .
But, again, everyone has forgotten about the term kataware-doki. I think this, once again, exposes the film’s underlying message about the importance of tradition. This is why Toshiki was never able to retain his connection with Futaba after she passed away like Taki was able to retain his connection with Mitsuha—Toshiki rejected tradition, while Taki embraced it. Toshiki refused to visit the shrine and carry the Miyamizu tradition, while Taki decided to visit the shrine and re-establish his spiritual link with Mitsuha.
The abandonment of the word “kataware-doki” is symbolic of the history of Itomori being abandoned, only leaving behind elderly’s grasp on tradition. Taki and Mitsuha’s embracement of tradition allows them to retain their connection, regardless of time or space.
With all that in mind, I think that because the documents contained in the Miyamizu Shrine were destroyed by The Great Fire of Mayugoro, the knowledge of the phrase went with it. That term lived on as long as it could through the generations, but now only the elderly even remember the term.
I assume the word was created because the Miyamizus once understood the importance of the spiritual connections they shared with others. They knew that the land where the first comets struck was sacred, so they built a shrine there and housed all of their documented beliefs there as well.
Remember my theory about the first comet? That it shares both a divine and a metaphorical connection with the future comet that will destroy Itomori. Just like Taki and Mitsuha, the past and future comets that will strike Itomori are bound together, regardless of space or time. Just like there is a link between the lake and the shrine, there is an unbreakable bond shared between two young people in love.
This gets at the title of the movie, and highlights the importance of the classroom scene when Mitsuha sees the message from Taki. The movie is not about two people finding out each other’s names—it’s about truly understanding someone else. When Taki writes his “name” in Mitsuha’s hand, he doesn’t actually write his name—he writes “I love you.”
Love is hard work and requires two people to invest in one another. So even when Taki gives Mitsuha back her red yarn thread and their memory of one another is severed…they never really forget one another, right? They have this feeling that the other is still out there. And at the end of the movie when they pass by each other on the train, they know something is there and chase after each other.
So in that final shot of the movie, when Mitsuha and Taki ask for each other’s name, what they’re really doing is starting their life together. It takes a lot of courage to invite someone into your life like that, and you only do it when you feel something special with that person.
In effect, the entire movie becomes a defamiliarization of finding your true soulmate. You never know the name of the person you’ll end up with—but you know the person , right? You know the kind of person that will make you happy, that will become your other half, that will complete you. All you need is the courage to finally invite them in when you find them.
Japan has an unfortunate relationship with natural disaster. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, mudslides, etc. The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011 took 19,749 lives and caused a nuclear power plant to have a level-7 meltdown. As of 2024, in all the world, that’s the 6th highest death toll from a natural disaster (8th if you count heat waves).
Put that in perspective relative to the America where the two biggest natural disasters of the 21st century were Hurricane Maria in 2017 (3,000 deceased) and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (1,836 deceased).
Part of what makes Your Name so special is that it allows us to imagine a world where love triumphs over tragedy. A world where all those stolen hopes, dreams, and potentials can be reclaimed and actually lived. Where your soulmate wasn’t, unbeknownst to you, lost forever. It offers a degree of comfort and solace to those who did and will lose loved ones to disaster. Which is, honestly, quite a beautiful thing.
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Kimi no Na wa.
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| Popularity Members ' }) }) })(jQuery); play Mitsuha Miyamizu, a high school girl, yearns to live the life of a boy in the bustling city of Tokyo—a dream that stands in stark contrast to her present life in the countryside. Meanwhile in the city, Taki Tachibana lives a busy life as a high school student while juggling his part-time job and hopes for a future in architecture. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Official Discussion: Your Name [SPOILERS] : r/movies
The masterpiece that was 'Your Name' : r/movies
It's almost overbearing, how much Shinaki wants his audience to feel the emotions of his characters; with the sentimental and even cheesy music, constant pillow shots, and the sulking inner monologues. Behind Shinkai's delicate aesthetic and directional touch; his stories and characters are actually pretty shallow.
Your Name movie review & film summary (2017)
Writer/director Makoto Shinkai's anime 'Kimi no na wa'/'Your Name' goes far beyond the tropes of a body-swapping film to get to the heart of humanity.
The quest of the film's odd couple, Taki and Mitsuha, simply doesn't stir the heart. Perhaps it's their independence from a family backstory that makes them seem so abstract. And that's ...
Your Name is a Japanese animated fantasy; humorous, romantic, captivating and utterly beautiful. It starts off as a light body-swap comedy…. And then about a third of the way through, the tone of the story changes and the scope opens right up, unexpectedly. Your Name is not a Studio Ghibli anime, but just as good as the best of them.
Read reviews on the anime Kimi no Na wa. (Your Name.) on MyAnimeList, the internet's largest anime database. Mitsuha Miyamizu, a high school girl, yearns to live the life of a boy in the bustling city of Tokyo—a dream that stands in stark contrast to her present life in the countryside. Meanwhile in the city, Taki Tachibana lives a busy life as a high school student while juggling his part ...
Not that your eyes will mind. While the broad character animations feel like a concession compared to the colder designs of Shinkai's previous work, there's still more to gawk at in any single ...
September 21, 2018. A movie review by James Berardinelli. Your Name, the 2016 animated film from Makoto Shinkai, was a critical and commercial success in its native Japan, where it became the fourth-highest grossing film of all time and second highest-grossing anime (behind Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away). A metaphysical fantasy that doubles ...
Your Name : r/movies
Your Name Reviews. It's a contemplative and introspective film that uses the body-swapping gimmick to explore growing up and experiencing life from another perspective, and it celebrates how ...
Your Name - Wikipedia ... Your Name
Your Name
Your Name (Kimi no Na wa) explained
Your Name Ending Explained (In Detail)
Top 3 for me for sure. The other two are I Want to Eat Your Pancreas and Silent Voice. I love "Your Name" but Akira is still the greatest Anime Movie I ever watched till now. 116 votes, 45 comments. 36K subscribers in the KimiNoNaWa community. Subreddit for the movie Kimi no Na wa.
Your Name: Everything We Know About The Adaptation So ...
Kimi no Na wa. (Your Name.)
You could so easily explore anything from body dysphoria, gender roles, consent, bias, etc. Instead the movie just explored none of those, went for a star-crossed-lovers plot, and fell into so many bullshit anime tropes. They need to save the town from destruction, lack of consent is played as a joke, there are so many needless "fan service ...
Published by 18.04.2023. "Your Name" is a critically acclaimed anime film that has captured the hearts of audiences around the world. Released in 2016, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon, grossing over $360 million at the box office and earning numerous awards and nominations. Directed by Makoto Shinkai, "Your Name" tells the story ...
Summary: In Northern Italy in 1983, seventeen year-old Elio begins a relationship with visiting Oliver, his father's research assistant, with whom he bonds over his emerging sexuality, their Jewish heritage, and the beguiling Italian landscape. Director: Luca Guadagnino. Writers:screenplay by James Ivory.
Still, even with beautiful scenery and delightful music, the success of Call Me By Your Name rests on the shoulders of Hammer and Chalamet. Thankfully, both actors deliver entirely compelling and heart wrenching performances as Oliver and Elio. Chalamet plays the precocious young man coming of age and exploring his sexuality, while Hammer ...