Holy Sh*t, 'Call Me by Your Name'

WELL FUCK. I’m not sure how I got through Oscar season without seeing Call Me by Your Name, and I hope the two of you who are reading this will accept this as my formal apology. I don’t remember ever being this moved by a motion picture. Maybe I have been, but I don’t remember it. I left the cinema shell-shocked, gasping for air, my heart thumping in my chest. This is a masterpiece, art that touched my soul for reasons not quite tangible. And worst of all, it crept the fuck up on me.

The first half of the film is slow, languid the way French and European films often are, the lazy pace of which feels unnervingly voyeuristic. It’s exceptionally perceptive and honest, presenting the elements of adolescent summers unpolished, raw and clumsy. Elio, Timothée Chalamet’s character, is far too clever for 17 and the elliptical conversations he has with his friends, his family and his soon-to-be lover Oliver drive the film forward quickly, never quite leaving you the time to pause and digest what he says, much less what he means.

And then there’s the second half, which just blows up in your face, if you’ll pardon the imagery. No words can do justice to the beauty of this relationship, of two bodies that were meant to find each other and then let go. Two bodies that come together because the alternative would be unbearable, even if the alternative contains the threat of shame and rejection and guilt, at least for Oliver. Two bodies that Elio’s charming parents absolve of shame and rejection and guilt, even in a decade where queerness was conditionally tolerated at best, ostracised and condemned at worst.

Throughout, there is powerful symbolism — fruit being the most obvious, parallels to Greek eroticism being inevitable — and burning questions, of attachment, of identity, of emotion, whether to hide or declare oneself as queer, Jewish, in love, vulnerable. As the end credits roll and Elio stares into the flames crying, before the celebration of Hanukkah, it’s pretty clear that he would rather speak than die.

10/10