Chalamet's breakout lead turn in Luca Guadagnino's masterpiece is a devastating sneak attack: so subtle and unfussy, so startlingly free of the kind of mannered, Method-y intensity that often dooms the work of young thesps, that you don't see it coming straight for your gut. As Elio, a brainy, brooding boy of 17 who falls in love with his father's 24-year-old research assistant (Armie Hammer) in Italy during the summer of 1983, he pulls you far into the churning depths — the lust and longing, self-loathing, zigzagging intellect and abiding goodness — of his character's inner world. No performance this year felt as emotionally, physically and intellectually alive, or so thoroughly collapsed the distance between actor and viewer — though you may not fully realize it until you're watching the final shot and Elio's tears become your own. — Jon Frosch