This year I finally started watching some queer films again. I watched Red, White, and Royal Blue. An ex played L.I.E. for me as well as the first few scenes from North Sea, Texas. I watched The Favourite, Saltburn, Maestro, Bottoms, Poor Things, and Down Low. I also watched Call Me By Your Name. I’d seen discourse about it ever since it came out. I’d heard about the peach scene and seen a clip of Tim Tim Chalamet sitting in front of the fire. It’s a beautiful film. A painful film. I eagerly consumed every second of it. The long shots, the quietness, the music, the love, the loss, the sex, the pain. Suddenly, I couldn’t understand the discourse on it. Everyone wanted to complain about the love story. It’s not a romance because there is no happily ever after. But there is a love story. It’s a love story, isn’t it? But I don’t think so. Call Me By Your Name is not a love story. It’s a story about love. There’s a difference. The second lets it settle into its true form: a hopefully sort of tragedy.
God, was it relatable.
One - The Italian Elephant in the Room
Most of the time when Call Me By Your Name comes up, you’re going to run into one of three controversies. First: the actors were straight. Listen, that does not matter, it has not mattered, it will not matter. You cannot start asking performers to disclose their sexuality as a condition for their hiring. You do not know these people personally and you do not know their sexualities. You’re not entitled to that information. People complain about this all the time with straight actors playing gay but it’s such a nothing controversy that seems to completely ignore what acting is in the first place. The fact that LGBT actors have historically gotten fewer roles after coming out does not mean all queer roles must be played by our community. It means we need to get hired more often for jobs with better pay. Part of that means everyone else needs to go out and watch a whole bunch of independent films, including the random ones you come across on Amazon that maybe aren’t as technically competent as big studio films. Ardently supporting amateur and independent art is how you nurture and enforce a vibrant art system that manages to pay its employees well.
The second controversy you might come across: Armie Hammer is a cannibal. He’s not. Um. Insert a three hour long video on fantasy here. That’s also missing the point. Hammer wasn’t accused of literally going out and eating people. He was accused of sexual assault. That’s not as gasping gossip worthy so it tends to get buried under the rest of it, but that’s the important part of it all. It’s fine if his involvement makes you want to avoid the film. Everyone has different stances on engaging with art made by problematic people. I don’t particularly care about that debate. I find it wholly uninteresting.
The third controversy is a big ol Italian Elephant, roaming around with tusks made of garlic bread, eyes of meatball, and a body of spaghetti noodles. I’m Italian so I’m allowed to make stupid, not really funny jokes like that. Burned into the noodles are the words age gap.
Call Me By Your Name follows the romance between 17-year-old Elio, played by Timmy The real OG Chalamet, and 24-year-old Armie Let Me Nom Nommy On Your Armie Hammer. Um. Tim Tim is a young looking 17. It comes in part from his whole Victorian Era twink vibe he’s got. Armie was in his 30s. And he looks it. Thinking about it now, it calls to mind the casting in the Divergent series. Triss looked like a teenager. Four looked like a full-ass man. As Vishalli Alagappan puts it in Wake Magazine, “On a good day, Chalamet looks like a 15-year-old and Hammer look slike a middle-aged man, so the age difference is jarring on screen.”
If there’s one thing the internet loves, its talk about age gaps. Though that is putting it a bit unfairly. Age gap doesn’t sound quite so serious as “pedophilia,” which is what most people mean when they’re talking about Call Me By Your Name’s age gap, especially if they’re pointing out how young Timmy looks especially in comparison to Armie. Alagappan points out that Chalamet’s character, Elio, is portrayed as obviously young and innocent. “The professor and his wife call Elio ‘Elly-belly’ and rub his tummy. He is doe-eyed, curious, and submissive.”
My instinct is to roll my eyes at this discourse and throw up a giant sign that says, “Sometimes bad stuff happens in fiction, and that doesn’t mean the art is bad.” A lot of people who like to play moral CinemaSins are entirely allergic to the idea that depiction is not endorsement and that sometimes in art endorsement is also not endorsement. Action films that go “look at all this cool violence, isn’t it neato?” aren’t actually advocating for you to go out and commit violence. But! I think critique is a good thing. Yes, the age difference here, if this were real life, would be disturbing, inappropriate, and gross.
In calling the film dangerous because of this, an article in Psychiatric Times says, “This film is about sexual predation. … One could argue that Oliver grooms Elio by moving into the household, spending time with him, endearing trust before advancing to a sexual relationship that is secretive. … In light of the ‘Me Too Movement’ and the endeavor to eradicate sexual abuse bred by an inappropriate power dynamic, this film promotes a dangerous message.”
Conservative moron Chad Felix Greene jumped in to say, “It is more than just a movie or a book. It is a cultural message to teenagers to seek out adult partners and romanticise relationships they are not yet able to manage..”
But that only makes sense as a controversy if the film portrays their love as a positive good thing. It only makes sense if you think Call Me By Your Name is a …
Two - Love Story
What defines a romance? When you’re talking about real life, who knows? It defies a lot of concrete categorization. It could be a lot of tossing in bed sheets, it could be teasing each other, it could be silly dates, or more. What about in fiction though? Romance is actually a genre. Every genre has a couple of “rules.” A mystery has to have a mystery, for instance. In romance, there is a single large requirement that you must meet. The couple in the story must have a happily ever after ending. The only exception to that is if you’re writing a series and instead they get a happily for now ending in the individual story. All subgenres also have to follow this rule.
Is Call Me a romance?
No. Oliver leaves. He gets in a romance with someone else. We end the film with Elio staring into the fire while his family sets the table for a holiday dinner behind him. He cries. We end the film with the young lover heartbroken and in despair. So it isn’t a romance.
But everyone talks about how it’s about love. After all, the plot surrounds Elio and Oliver getting to know each other. Elio finally taking the steps to reveal himself to Oliver, the two of them taking the chance, stepping into each other, experimenting, being sexual, going on a trip together, and getting broken. It is about love. It’s about their love, isn’t it?
Well, no. This is my hot take, but Call Me By Your Name isn’t about the couple. It isn’t really about Oliver at all, actually. But it is a love story in that it’s a story about love. Specifically, it’s about Elio’s capability for love.
While Elio is attracted to Oliver and trying to understand what he feels and how he interacts with it, we see him with a girl. She’s an important person in his life. They’re pursuing a romantic and sexual relationship which I honestly didn’t expect when I pressed play. I thought Timmy was just going to be a gay twink the whole way through. But he isn’t. He has feelings for this girl. It’s a sort of love. He adores her, and she adores him. But he isn’t in love with her. That becomes clear as he falls hed over heels for Oliver. Oliver is Elio’s first true love. It isn’t something he’s experienced before and it recontextualizes what he feels for her. When they meet while he’s mad at Oliver, I saw that not just as an adolescent attempt at revenge against Oliver but as Elio trying to see if he could return to that other form of love and be content with it. He couldn’t. Is that because being with her was an exploration of comphet? Or was it more about how he hadn’t actually fallen in love with her. They loved each other. They weren’t in love with each other.
When Elio returns from his trip with Oliver, alone and heartbroken, desperate, despairing, they meet again. She recognizes the sadness in him. They don’t reinitiate what they had before. They hug. The two of them recognize the pain inside each other, and they recognize that whatever they feel, it’s a form of love. They’re there for the other person. They want to help them and be helped by them.
If we see this as a story about love, and specifically about Elio’s love, instead of being about a specific love story, we can start to contextualize some of the “ickiness” it gives a lot of people who want to engage in discourse. Oliver rejects Elio at first. This isn’t a sad moment because they should be together. When I watched it, it seemed like Oliver found the idea inappropriate because of their age and because he himself was in the closet. A taboo laid over them. He sees that. We see that. But Elio doesn’t. Elio sees something beautiful and has taken the risk to give himself over.
To give yourself is a sort of death. After Elio and Oliver have been sexual with each other, Elio masturbates with a peach. Apparently, in the book, Oliver consumes the peach, ejaculate and all. Looking back on it, Elio regards it as if Oliver was telling him, “I believe with every cell in my body that every cell in yours must not, must never die, and if it does have to die, let it die inside my body.” And Armie Hammer read that passage and said, ah, yes, vore. Sign me up! Yes, that is a joke, but, really, isn’t consumption the truest form of desire? In the book, here, Elio is devoured by Oliver. A part of him becomes his. And it goes there to die, to nurture Oliver, to transform from Elio’s cells into Oliver’s cells. To give yourself is a death. Looking back, in the book, Elio welcomes such death.
The scene in the movie is a bit overwhelming. Oliver goes to scoop out some of Elio’s emission and consume it, and Elio freaks out. This hurts. He doesn’t want Oliver to eat it. It’s gross. He’s gross. Oliver wants to eat the peach. Elio starts to cry. It’s no longer about the peach. He doens’t want Oliver to go. But I want to posit that that is still about the peach and it is still about consumption and therefore, it is about death.
Their time together is ending. If Elio gives himself to Oliver, if he goes inside his lover to die, and Oliver leaves him, then Elio will die alone, incomplete, and undevoured.
Near the end of the movie, Elio’s father gives him a little speech where he tells him how important and beautiful what Elio and Oliver had together was. He mentions that most people don’t even get to experience that once. It was beautiful. It’s an emotional scene, and it’s supposed to help in a way, but it hurts.
Elio’s father is implied to also be gay, but because of society, he’s pursued the life he has with Elio’s mother. Elio giving himself like this, like he almost did with the peach, sharing moments together with this man, takes strength and vulnerability. Many gay men of the time would never have the ability to experience their own hearts so fully.
But it doesn’t seem like he’s really talking about Oliver here. It’s all about Elio. It’s Elio’s ability to love, to give himself, to feel, to care, to hurt. These are all within him because this has all been about Elio and his love. If you disagree, I do want to at least ask you to rewatch the film and consider it to be fully about exploring Elio’s love.
Marcus Tran argues says most people view the antagonist of the film to be time itself. That’s what gets in the way of their relationship. Focusing in on the professor’s speech to Elio after the boy’s heart is broken, and seeing Oliver’s engagement announcement, Tran argues instead that the antagonist is heteronormative society, the judgement and hate that exists outside this small, beautiful community, this brief moment in time and space. If those are the antagonists if we view this as a romantic tragedy, what’s the antagonist if it’s about Elio’s love?
Oliver.
What do you do when the person you love, the object of your affection, is the thing that hurts you over and over again?
Three - Tragedy
Cast your mind to your first love. How did it end? Did it hurt? What would happen if, when that pain is fresh, someone you looked up to told you that it was rare and beautiful and you should be proud of it? Did you sit there waiting for a call? Did the call tell you there was no future, but still, you sweet, precious thing, still I love you, and I remember us, and maybe, maybe, I’ll come around to you if I’m ever brave enough?
A lot of the commentary I read painted the film as evil because they think Oliver is cruel. He takes advantage of a sweet, innocent young man. He’s domineering and a bit of a bully. He’s an adult. He’s well-educated, and obviously is the target of affection. He’s aware how short his time here is, and he’s aware that he’ll return to the states, back to his life, back to the girls and the expectations, and he’ll leave it all behind. Oliver is old enough to know all of this and what it means. Elio is too innocent to grasp how the world is crueler than his freshly opened heart.
But, well, I think they’re half-right. By that, I mean, no, I don’t think the movie is problematic, but I do think their negative portrayal of Oliver is correct. Oliver sucks. He’s handsome and charming and smart and when you love someone like him, it feels amazing. But he makes sure he’s in control the whole time. He decides when it starts, when it ends, the boundaries. He’ll push yours and strongly enforce his own. He’ll tease you until you cry and then comfort you. He brings you in and in and in and then he gets to run away.
At the end of the film, Oliver remembers his love with Elio, yes. He remembers it. Maybe he’ll end up like Elio’s father, unhappy though trying to be, pretending to be heterosexual. Or maybe he’s bi. It seems like, at the end, he gets to escape the pain. He takes the good memories, the good parts of Elio that he has consumed, and he gets to be happy.
Elio isn’t happy.
At the end of the movie, Elio is broken.
His precious love was taken and treasured and quashed by a man who gets to love someone else. Who gets to move on. Elio can’t move. He’s right where Oliver left him, sitting at the restaurant, and everything else Taylor Swift says.
This is a beautiful movie in part because of the scenery, the lighting, the blocking, the script, the acting, the beautiful people, the music, the feels, the smells. But it’s really, truly beautiful because it hurts. It doesn’t hurt because the perfect lovers don’t end up together, because life gets in the way. It hurts because Elio’s beautiful, frightened, innocent, encompassing love is settling into him like a sickness.
Four - Pain
You are a special person who deserves a special person. I cannot be that person. That’s what my ex told me when he ended things a couple years ago. I spent that Christmas crying. I did the same for that birthday and Valentine’s. Sometimes, in a blue moon, he would text me. My heart would soar. Yes. Please, talk to me. I love you. I know I shouldn’t, but I love you. And then a couple of weeks later, he’d push me away again.
I’m a dark haired Italian who has dedicated a large amount of my life to music. I compose and play. I am timid and like to tease people. I will write you silly letters and imagine our names together, hold onto your clothes so I can have your smell when I go home from our dates. I fell in love with another artist type. Like Oliver, he was tall and handsome. He’d share his work with me and we’d enjoy it together. He only complimented my art once. I’m not Jewish, though he assumed I was. It was my first time being in love with someone. And it was amazing. And it was terrifying. And it hurt so terribly.
When I heard Elio’s father’s speech, it was like my own brain had jumped into the character. Only the words were tainted. “What you two had was special,” my brain said, “and it will never happen for you again. That was your one chance for happiness. Be glad you got to experience it, and settle in that for the rest of your life because it will not come again. It was supposed to be him. The love you shared was special and now its dead and you will never find it again.”
I cried a lot after watching the movie. I’d been single for about two years by that point. To still be hurting was ridiculous. I felt like a fool.
He found love again so easily, too. Even if that itself ended, it still felt like another whisper from the universe. He, my Oliver, was lovable. He’d find plenty to love him and he’d find it easy. But my though, the Elio, I was trapped by the fireplace, yearning, aching, wishing. It hurt. God, it hurt.
Call Me By Your Name is a reminder that the love was still beautiful. The capacity to love fully and innocently, scared and vulnerable, to offer yourself for consumption and death, that is beautiful. And what others may do to that love might hurt terribly. But that doesn’t remove the beauty. The good memories are there. The good love was there. You were there. It was your love. Your love was the truly beautiful thing, the rest was just window dressing, and that capacity within you is why it hurts. Eventually, you will return to yourself, and the beauty will come back to the world when you get to offer that same love.
It’s just scary to do so. And it hurts when it fails. And maybe the loves you have are with people who take advantage of you. Problematic as people might say.
But love anyway, you beautiful fool. That’s the only beauty in the world. It’s the only hot summer sun and it’s the only flame in the fireplace. The warmth will come again. Huddle in the cold in the meanwhile. Ache and yearn and cry. It happened. I remember it all. It will be okay one day. Eventually, we will gain another name.
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