The medium of film has the potential to not only to move audiences emotionally, but to speak to fundamentals in the human condition so that we may know ourselves (and each other) better on the subterranean level of essences. The 2017 film, Call Me by Your Name, is not “gay cinema” even though 17-year-old Elio falls in love with Oliver, a 24-year-old beginning doctoral student when the latter is staying with Elio and his parents at their villa in Italy during the summer of 1983. Falling-in-love, so unmistakable once it has hit, is so utterly human at the gut-level that the twists and turns in a narrative are but superficial in comparison, and even the gender of the beloved may come to matter less than would typically be assumed. In fact both Elio and Oliver are attracted to women, and after his summer stay Oliver calls the Perlmans during a winter Jewish festival to announce that he is engaged; for even though Elio fell for Oliver, Oliver is not in love with Elio. Elio must take the unrequited love as a given, as about as hard as reality can be felt, and so Elio has the choice of whether to suffer the loss or "stuff it" emotionally by burning emotion itself from his very being. Precisely this decision is the subject of a father-son talk that he has with his dad after Oliver has left. It is the substance of that talk that anchors the film firmly in the human condition, such that even the narrative, not to mention the fact that Elio has fallen for a man, is transcended. It is just such a transcendence that renders the medium of film so substantial, even meaningful, even if mostly just potentially. Parsing the father-son dialogue will lay bare this thesis.
The full essay is at "Call Me by Your Name."
