Youth hurts

GUADAGNINO RETURNS TO TEENHOOD WITH WE ARE WHO WE ARE…

- James Mottram

The last time Luca Guadagnino took on adolescent angst, the result was 2017’s Oscar-winning Call Me By Your Name, with Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer. So you could be forgiven for having sky-high expectations for We Are Who We Are, Guadagnino’s first foray into television. An HBO-Sky co-production (albeit showing on BBC Three in the UK), this eight-episode miniseries moves slightly east – from Call Me…’s Crema setting to Padua in Italy’s Veneto region – for a story set on a US military base.

The primary focus is two 14-year olds, the arrogant Fraser (Jack Dylan Grazer) and the cucumber-cool Caitlin (Jordan Kristine Seamón). “That’s the age when you start to feel that you are becoming,” says Guadagnino. “You are leaving your infancy for good.” Like Call Me…, WAWWA deals with blossoming sexuality, as well as issues of gender identity and fluidity. The kids want to party, fight, love, shout, scream… all while their parents are pledging allegiance to the flag.

Grazer – who played the younger version of Chalamet’s Beautiful Boy character – favorably compares the show with a doc he recalls about teens with folks in the military. “They’re these insane rebels,” he grins. “And they have parties and they’re like the worst of the worst. They’re nuts. And Luca captured that perfectly… being on an army base for your childhood is the epitome of just like being trapped in a box of convention. And these kids find a way to get out of that box.”