“Call me by your name”

[Spoiler alert: some details about the movie “Call me by your name”]

Recently, I saw the movie “Call me by your name”, from the homonymous novel: a beautiful delicate, intense, and bittersweet love story between a 17-year-old boy, Elio, and his father’s 24-year-old assistant, Oliver, visiting as an intern for six weeks during the summer vacation. 

It’s the story of a beautiful friendship that blossoms and blooms in the luxuriant gardens and small deserted towns, in the sunshine and waters of Northern Italy in the ’80s. A wonderful friendship that overcomes the boundaries of age, continents, culture, language, and even taboos; a love story where camaraderie, romance, and sexual relationship melt into one another seamlessly and spontaneously. 

I loved this movie which resonates with me and my own feelings and sensitivity in many, many ways. But there is one part in particular that I’d like to share here: something that Elio’s father, a wise, kind, understanding, open-minded man, says to Elio towards the end. 

As the love story between Elio and Oliver comes to an end when the latter has to inevitably return to his country at the close of his summer visit, Elio is distraught. Partly he tries to hide his sadness or, at least, his tears. But his parents see and understand — knew and understood all along — and his father says to Elio something along the following lines: “You and Oliver had a beautiful friendship, love, something rare and precious that most people go through a lifetime without experiencing. So don’t shut out this pain now. Acknowledge and feel this pain now, because you cannot shut out the pain without losing the joy and beauty, too”.

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[Here are some of Elio’s father’s words that I was paraphrasing:

 “You’re too smart not to know how rare, how special, what you two had was […]

 ‘Parce que c’était lui. Parce que c’était moi.’ […]

 You were both lucky to have found each other. […]

 When you least expect it, Nature has cunnings ways to find your weakest spot. […]

 Right now you may not want to feel anything, you may never want to feel anything, but feel something you obviously did. […]

 We rip out so much of ourselves to get cured faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty, and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything… what a waste! I may have come close, but I never had what you two have, something always got in the way. How you live your life is your business; just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. […]

Right now there’s sorrow, pain: don’t kill it, and with it the joy you felt.”]