It’s a long film full of long takes; shots of doors, shots
of sunlight refracting in a pool of cold water, shots of faces. For many of
these shots, the camera remains still for second after second, and the film occasionally
takes on the hazy look of a set of holiday slides. But it’s long. So long, in
fact, that we find ourselves distanced from the momentum of the romance. When
action comes, it comes suddenly. This can be exciting—Elio using a peach to masturbate
is the sexiest moment I can remember from a recent movie, because when Elio
struggles to bite out the stone, dripping juices all over his bed, it’s
naturalistic and completely believable. Chalamet had to be convinced to do the
scene, and the reason for that goes deeper than any fruit-based fetishism—think
of the fun he must have had with his embarrassing sex in the wonderful Lady Bird. In Lady Bird, Chalamet is an archetype, and his uninterested approach
to female pleasure is just what we expect from him. But masturbating with a
peach is unexpected, because it’s preceded by a bunch of long takes of doors.
I’m being flippant, but I’m trying to get to the root of why
I struggled with Call Me By Your Name.
For all I loved the sharp transitions to sexiness, the romance between Elio and
Oliver simply does not make sense. We aren’t shown enough—not enough of them
together, not enough flirting—and the advances in their relationship are
jarring, almost frightening. I wasn’t put off by the treatment of the age
difference at the time, but since much of the film is given to us from Elio’s perspective,
unexpected sex brings with it a suggestion of the threatening power of the
older, more experienced man taking more control than the film wants to admit.
Unexpected sex leaves us to fill in explanatory gaps, things which we aren’t told,
and Oliver’s presence (or nonpresence) makes that uncomfortable. In colour in pacing, the movie is dreamlike, and like a dream it hints towards worries at the back of the mind. Old archetypes;
the young learn from the old, the old enjoy the young.
The father’s monologue towards the end of the movie
compounded my anxieties. He tells Elio to learn from his experience, tells him
not to be victimised. He tells him that something similar happened to him. To
treat this scene as life advice, as objective truth that shouldn’t be worried
about, would be like reading Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ as a rallying cry for us all
to take ship and seek a newer world. This is a film about nostalgia, seeped
through with dancefloor colours and new wave tunes that bleed into one another
like paints on a canvas. When characters talk nostalgically, as the father does
here, we should think about what they’re saying. By telling Elio that he’s in
control, that he can make what he will of what he had with Oliver, his father
lies to him and perpetuates a cycle. Throughout the film, we are shown that
Elio doesn’t control anything. That’s not just about sex, although Oliver excruciatingly
teases him with the peach and with an unfinished blowjob. It’s about pacing,
and things happening without warning as if we know where the story’s going to
go as soon as it begins, as if the filmmakers just have to fill in the details
and let us work out the rest. About the audience knowing what a relationship
between an older man and a younger man is about without having to see the
movie. It’s not Oliver’s fault, and the film doesn’t blame him. It’s just the
way it is.
