Though he’s best known for his Oscar-nominated work on Call Me By Your Name, director Luca Guadagnino’s fruitful career actually stretches back more than two decades. From his early-aughts documentary work to his numerous team-ups with Tilda Swinton, the revered Italian director, who turned 49 this August but already claims 50 in our interview, has seemingly done it all. The one venture he had yet to try, in fact, was TV, something increasingly common for the auteur set.
We Are Who We Are, Guadagnino’s new HBO series, feels like a natural extension of Call Me By Your Name. Like that film, the show, which follows Americans living on an Italian military base, takes place in the director’s native Italy and revels in the accompanying coastal languor. Moreover, it similarly uses teenage characters to tell a story about the neverending exploration of identity (here, both gender and sexual). It also shares more than a few commonalities with Guadagnino’s other work, including the material obsession of certain characters in I Am Love (We Are Who We Are’s Fraser is obsessed with Raf Simons) and the shocking twist-of-fates of A Bigger Splash. A leisurely piece of character-driven drama, We Are Who We Are is a fascinating depiction of teenage ennui and rebellion that frequently blurs the line between film and TV in the most beautiful way imaginable.
Following the premiere of the new series, them. hopped on a Zoom call with Guadagnino to talk about making the transition from film to TV, what inspires him to tell stories about youth, and what inspired his decision to write an entire scene about the evocative work of poet Ocean Vuong.
Warning: Mild spoilers for the first four episodes of We Are Who We Are below.
Both Call Me By Your Name and We Are Who We Are focus on adolescent queer exploration. What draws you towards stories about people in this age group?
Well, I also made another movie called Melissa P. I made a movie called Mundo civilizado about four 19-year-olds exploring the musical scene of Catania. So I’ve always worked a lot with the younger [generation]. But at the same time, I also explore characters from completely different age groups. In I Am Love, it’s a middle-aged woman. In A Bigger Splash, it’s middle-aged people. In Suspiria, it’s women of all ages, up to 300 years old. So I’m not necessarily someone who works for the theme of youth, per se. It’s up to the story. It’s up to the moment.
The idea of teenagers is interesting to me because it’s a fascinating age. It’s an age in which you’re changing — your body, your identity — and you don’t know what to do. You don’t know how to deal with these changes that you don’t control. You are kind of being [lifted] out of the enchantment of infancy and you are going toward adulthood without knowing what’s happening to you. It’s a confusing time, but it’s also a very exciting time for experimentation.
You really tap into this sense of teenage rebellion in We Are Who We Are. Many characters seem deeply dissatisfied in life, which sometimes manifests in spontaneous bursts of violence. Fraser obviously harbors a lot of resentment towards his mother and slaps her in the premiere. Caitlin’s brother frequently berates her. What made you want to hone in on this feeling of unbridled teenage angst?
More than teenage angst, what I tried to explore is the messiness of life and the messiness of these people. Everything is mess. There is not an idea of an “edited life,” an “edited identity,” or an “edited idea of self.” That is more for the media, and even worse for social media. What I believe is that our lives, our identities, and our relationships with others come with mess, with difficulties, and with mistakes — constantly. It comes with a level of intrusion into the realm of the other that may or may not be violent. But at the same time, it is this conflict that makes people grow up. And that’s what I want this show to explore.
One of the earliest things I picked up on about this show is its distinctly filmic nature. It’s pretty light on plot and very heavy on mood, emotion, and feeling. I can’t stop thinking about the opening scene in episode four, which concludes with a near three-minute slow-motion sequence of eight teens jumping around in a spirited paintball fight. It’s beautiful but not what we’re used to seeing on TV. Making the transition from film to TV, did you ever find yourself torn between the expectations of the two mediums?
Well, I thought about it. I thought about how I could make myself speak a different language for a different medium. I made some tests about that. But then I realized that it was all theoretical. It didn’t really confront itself with the story and the characters and the actors. Once I realized that this was cerebral, I let it go and I approached the show in the same way I’d approach a movie.
Given the lightness of plot, what was the motivation behind setting this in 2016 and using the Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton election as a backdrop? I wouldn’t necessarily classify We Are Who We Are as a political show. But showing campaign speeches and making Caitlin’s father a staunch MAGA supporter naturally brings politics into the fold.
More than lightness of plot, I’d say this is a show about behavior. In terms of plot, it happens a lot. It’s just that you may be used to having some sort of plot surprise every number of minutes. We need to regain our habit to observe and to get knowledge from those observations. That was something I asked of my writers. I said to them, “Behavior. Not plot.”
But the decision to set this in 2016 comes because you always need to have a little perspective. I also believe that the Obama revolution, somehow, was unexpectedly going to meet a harsh waking-up. I found those six months [of the Trump vs. Clinton campaign trail] very fascinating — I remember them very well because I was preparing Suspiria and was following the elections very closely — as a moment in which we could juxtapose the intimate personal cases of each and every character against this awakening and reckoning.
In the third episode, Fraser has Caitlin over for dinner with his parents, leading to a scene that, in my opinion, reveals a lot about the contentious relationship he has with both of his moms. It got me thinking about how many of your films use family meals as a setting for action and drama. It’s there in I Am Love, in CMBYN, in A Bigger Splash. What about this communal activity appeals to you as a filmmaker?
I don’t know. I think it’s quite banal. We all have the habit of eating in company with people. And many times during those meetings around food, things are said, things are discovered. I find it very normal and human. I find it very resonant to a universal experience.
The soundtrack for this show is sublime, with hits from artists like Frank Ocean, Kanye West, and Blood Orange. Why did you want to include so much pop music?
If we think of these kids in 2016 and we want to dig deep into their identities, we need to understand who they listen to, how they listen, and what is the mood they are looking for when listening to music. And not only the kids, but also the adults. In fact, you go from Chance The Rapper being listened to by Fraser to Kip Hanrahan listened to by Maggie. It’s really about the psychology of the characters and the naturalism of the moment that we’re trying to describe.
There’s a scene in episode three where Fraser and Major Jonathan have a conversation in the library about Ocean Vuong, his poetry, and his then-upcoming novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous [note: the novel was released in 2019, while the show takes place in 2016]. Given that the novel would have just come out when you were beginning to film, what about it spoke to you that made you want to immediately write it into your script?
Well, his book of poems [Night Sky With Exit Wounds] is amazing. I discovered it when it came out. I also read the novel a few months before shooting the show. Here’s the thing: Fraser is an iconoclast and a young man of great knowledge and it was fitting to me that he would know Ocean Vuong. Fraser is someone who’s not going to be bending to any set of rules but his own, and his own rules always come from a deep sense of curiosity towards the arts and towards ideas that aren’t...let’s say, mandatory. Somehow, Fraser is very happy to not be with the majority. Whether it’s with a majority of one kind or another, he’s with the minority always.
Several of your directorial efforts are set in Italy, including this one, which is ostensibly about Americans. Do you think your tendency to set your stories there comes from a sense of familiarity or is there something resonant about Italy, as a concept?
I think it’s absolutely casual. [This show] could have been set in Japan. I think and hope that my sense of space and landscape comes across inherently as something beyond the place where we are. My first feature [1999’s The Protagonists] was in London. Suspiria was in Germany. It depends on the story, the situation, and the contingency of what I’m doing. I don’t calculate it and I don't feel bound to Italy because I know it. I hope to have an eye that allows me to understand how to see a place even if I don’t know it very well. But because I’m quite old now — I’m 50 — I guess I have a little bit of experience in life that has let me understand more than my place, more than Italy. I look forward to doing something in America one day.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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