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filmtrash · 7 years ago

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It has just occured to me that in CMBYN is never, not once, said or written "I love you" - neither in the book nor in the film. And yet we are perfectly aware what is this all about.Wow.

10 times they said, ‘I love you’ without saying ‘I love you’

1. Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine (book/film).

Let’s just rip the band aid off straight away shall we? Up until this point, I would say Elio and Oliver’s interactions could be passed off as desire and/or lust. Sure, they had an idea about how big this could get, but they couldn’t possibly know. This line changes everything. Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine. I want to start with the fact Oliver is the one that says it. Oliver has been so reserved up until this point – playing off their first kiss like it was only to settle Elio’s childish needs when it was really him giving in to his deepest desire. By saying these words, he is binding their souls together. By saying these words he’s asking that they exist as one so that when they’re apart, it shouldn’t have to hurt, because Elio is Oliver and Oliver is Elio and they can never really be apart if they are the same.

‘What is life without this? Which was why, in the end, it was I, and not he, who blurted out, not once, but many, many times. You’ll kill me if you stop, you’ll kill me if you stop, because it was also my way of bringing full circle the dream and the fantasy, me and him, the longed-for words from his mouth to my mouth, back into his mouth, swapping words from mouth to mouth, which was when I must have begun using obscenities that he repeated after me, softly at first, till he said, ‘Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine,’ which I’d never done in my life before and which, as soon as I said my own name as though it was his, took me to a realm never shared with anyone in my life before, or since.’

‘Took me to a realm never shared with anyone in my life before, or since.’ Imagine Elio was a real person for a second, and this book was a memoir, he’d have to have written it at least 20 years after these events took place in Summer ’83. This bitch literally said, ‘or since.’ It reminds me of when Elio tells Oliver about the fishing trip with Anchise, where Elio thought Oliver had died and where he goes onto say he would’ve ripped out Oliver’s heart ‘because that heart and his shirt were all I’d ever have to show for my life.’ If that doesn’t say ‘I love you’ in block capitals, underlined twice, then I don’t know what does.

2. For the first time in my life I watched him balk, prey to self-doubt. (book/film)

I want to give some background on Oliver before I go into this particular confession of love. As @lilchalamet educated me about, Oliver’s persona is very much something he’s constructed in order to hide in plain sight. For the first half of the movie it could be argued that Oliver isn’t authentically himself, even though Perlman nearly rumbles the whole façade with his ‘shy’ observation. Along with the ‘call me by your name’ statement, and nuzzling into Elio after their first night together, this look of self-doubt is the first time we get to see the man Oliver truly is behind it all. I mean, he’s butt-naked, but with this facial expression? He’s never been more exposed. There are so many layers to this look and this smile and I would be here all day if I had to examine all the individual emotions Armie so excellently depicts here. One of the things I get most strongly from looking at it, is this idea that Oliver is lost. It’s like, Elio isn’t keeping to his side of the deal. He gave himself to Elio and Elio isn’t giving himself back. He’s calling Elio by his name and getting silence in return. This look literally says ‘I love him and I’m about to lose him.’

3. I just wanted to be with you. (book/film)

This comes at the end of Elio’s freak out about Oliver and about his sexuality. In the book, Oliver wears his bathing suit and it makes Elio realise a lot of things:

‘Perhaps the physical and metaphorical meanings are clumsy ways of understanding what happens when two beings need, not just to be close together, but to come totally ductile that each becomes the other. To be who I am because of you. To be who he was because of me.’

It’s literally like Elio’s body has carried himself to the post office without him even realising. I don’t know if this counts as cheating because I don’t necessarily think the line ‘I just wanted to be with you’ is Elio saying, ‘I love you’ because I don’t think Elio knows that yet. I think he is carrying out acts of love without knowing that that’s what they are.

‘For you, however you think of it, it’s still fun and games, which it should be. For me it’s something I haven’t figured out yet, and the fact I can’t scares me.’

I think this line and ‘I just wanted to be with you’ have the exact same effect. They are both being so obvious yet are so clueless. I think at this point I’m probably screaming at the screen or my page going ‘YOU LOVE EACH OTHER. GOD DAMN IT. WAKE UP.’ What is it Andrè said himself? ‘They seek each other again and again and again without necessarily realising that they’re going to concretize anything.’ It’s over for us bitches I’m telling you.

4. I don’t want you to go (film)

Things to note. I think this whole scene is the REAL turning point of the film. I think the eating/licking of the peach says, ‘I love you’ as much as the ‘I don’t want you to go’ line, but I’m not going to go into that here. Also, this line wasn’t in the book and was added in by Timmy. He was inspired by a similar line in Interstellar, where he played the son to a father who travelled into space.

Oliver might already know that he loves Elio, but this is when Elio works it out – fuck. In the book, it states;

‘I was crying because I’d never known so much gratitude and there was no other way to show it. And I was crying for the evil thoughts I’d nursed against him this morning. And for last night as well, because for better or worse (literally lines straight out of wedding vowels, kill me instantly please), I’d never be unable to undo it, and now was as good time as any to show him that he was right, that this wasn’t easy, that fun and games had a way of skidding off course and that if we had rushed into things it was too late to step back from them now.’

The line ‘I don’t want you to go’ is like a conclusion of that. These are his thoughts and the bottom line is that he just doesn’t want Oliver to go. It’s one of the closest things we get to ‘I love you’ and also the closest thing we get to Elio asking Oliver to stay. This is Elio’s moment of weakness, his slip-up, this is his Oliver-crying-in-Bergamo-next-to-the-sleeping-love-of-his-life-because-he-doesn’t-want-to-go moment.

5. I’ve been happy in B. (book)

I feel like everything I’m about to talk about isn’t talked about enough, so let me tell you a little something (and by little, I mean big). When Elio and Oliver are sitting in the tree, (k-i-s-s-i-n-g) Oliver tells Elio ‘I’ve been happy in B.’ Firstly, happiness is something that I don’t think Oliver’s experienced a lot in his life. I think he’s someone who very much conforms to societal pressures in order to sustain a good standard of living and make a life for himself. Falling in love and achieving true happiness be damned. So, to say being there has brought him happiness is a big statement. I also think Oliver saying, ‘I’ve been happy with you’ would pretty much be the same thing, but Oliver still has some self-reservation. He too had rehearsed losing Elio.

He doesn’t say that though, although Elio does. ‘I do love being here with you’ which he states was ‘[his] way of saying, I’ve been happy here as well.’ Can’t you just feel it on the tip of their tongues? They could both say it so easily but they’re both too afraid too. Once they say it they can’t take it back and neither of them know if it’ll be said in return.

6. The Bergamo/Rome Kiss (book/film)

I’m writing this with the fresh knowledge that it took them at least 8 times to film this kiss. So, bear with me.

The way that this kiss is portrayed in the movie by Timmy and Armie is, well – a lot. This is the moment they are totally and completely themselves. Oliver has been slowly unravelling ever since their first time, but by this point he is his authentic self.

In the book they go to Rome;

‘He pressed me against the wall and started to kiss me, his hips pushing into mine, his arms about to lift me off the ground. My eyes were shut, but I knew he had stopped kissing me to look around him; people could be walking by. I didn’t want to look. Let him be the one to worry. Then we kissed again. And, with my eyes still shut, I think I did hear two voices, old men’s voices, grumbling something about taking a good look at these two, wondering if in the old days you’d ever see such a sight. But I didn’t want to think about them. I didn’t worry. If he wasn’t worried, I wasn’t worried. I could spend the rest of my life like this: with him, at night, in Rome, my eyes totally shut, one leg coiled around his. I thought of coming back here in the weeks or months to come – for this was our spot.’

Sorry for the long quote but also, I’m not sorry at all because this is the moment Elio remembers so vividly 20 years later. It’s mentioned at least twice, so if you like to indulge in a little heartbreak, here’s some more quotes about Rome and this moment.

‘Every time I go back to Rome, I go back to that one spot. It is still alive for me, still resounds with something totally present, as though a heart stolen from a tale by Poe still throbbed under the ancient slate pavement to remind me that, here, I had finally encountered the life that was right for me but had failed to have.’

Let’s not forget he actually tells Oliver about what this meant to him;

‘Your best moment?’

I thought awhile.

‘The first night is the one I remember best – perhaps because I fumbled so much. But also, Rome. There is a spot on via Santa Maria dell’Anima that I revisit every time I’m in Rome. I’ll stare at it for a second, and suddenly it’ll all come back to me. I had just thrown up that night on the way back to the bar you kissed me. People kept walking by but I didn’t care, nor did you. That kiss is still imprinted there, thank goodness. It’s all I have from you. This and your shirt.’

The ‘thank goodness’, like he couldn’t bear to think of a life where that kiss wasn’t still imprinted into that wall in Rome. He remembers it in so much detail. Let’s not even talk about ‘it’s all I have from you. This and your shirt’ because I’m emotionally exhausted and its only number 6.

7. The Goodbye (film).

The first time I ever watched Call Me By Your Name, I was sat there, head in hands, begging for one of them to say something. I too, like Elio, can’t stand the silence. But maybe after the third time watching it I realised; what possibly could they have said to each other? Oliver could have said Later! to pay homage to this journey they’ve gone on together. Elio used to think Later! was arrogant remember, but now it would probably kill him to hear it for the last time. They could just say ‘goodbye’ but that’s so final. If they never say goodbye then nothing ever really ended. He’s asking that they exist as one so that when they’re apart, it shouldn’t have to hurt, because Elio is Oliver and Oliver is Elio and they can never really be apart if they are the same. They could even say ‘I love you’, because by this point they both know that. But that’s the point, isn’t it? They both know that, they don’t need to say it – they’ve never needed to say it. If loving each other wasn’t enough for Oliver to stay, saying it out loud wouldn’t do anyone any good.

Their hug and Oliver’s look before the train pulls away says it enough anyway.

8. You are the only person I’d like to say goodbye to when I die. (book)

‘Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the truth, maybe I didn’t want things to turn abstract, but I felt I should say it, because this was the moment to say it, because it suddenly dawned on me that this is why I had come, to tell him ‘You are the only person I’d like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you have died, my life as I know it, the me who is speaking to you now, will cease to exist. Sometimes I have this awful picture of waking up in our house in B. and, looking out to the sea, hearing the news from the waves themselves, He died last night. We missed out on so much.’

I have to sit for about twenty-minutes every time I read that because it’s honestly the most touching bit of literature I’ve ever read. We’ve surpassed the ‘I love you’ people, we are so far beyond ‘I love you’ now. Although I don’t hold this against Oliver, it saddens me to no end to know that whilst Oliver has a wife and two kids, a life that arguably has more substance, Elio literally lives his life in the shadow of Summer ’83. To the point where he calls his life a ‘thing’, because he knows himself that this wasn’t the life he thought he’d have. He is literally saying that if Oliver were to die, he would die too because Oliver is his life, Oliver is him. He’s asking that they exist as one so that when they’re apart, it shouldn’t have to hurt, because Elio is Oliver and Oliver is Elio and they can never really be apart if they are the same. It literally is that deep.

9. Cor Cordium (book)

“What did you write on the back of the postcard?”“It was going to be a surprise.”“I’m too old for surprises. Besides, surprises always come with a sharp edge that is meant to hurt. I don’t want to be hurt – not by you. Tell me.”“Just two words.”“Let me guess: If not later, when?”“Two words, I said. Besides, that would be cruel.”I thought for a while.“I give up.”“Cor Cordium, heart of hearts, I’ve never said anything truer in my life to anyone.”

Cor cordium definition: ‘Cor Cordium’ - Heart of hearts. If someone’s asking about your cor cordium, they want to know who you are really, what you really want, what you really intend, under all your masks and guises, all the sacrifices you make and the suboptimal substitutes you accept. What you’d do, want, be, if you feared no judgement and nothing internal or external impended on you, including the limits of your own nature? That’s what’s in your ‘heart of hearts’. Elio is what is in Oliver’s ‘heart of hearts.’

Does this even need commenting on? This is basically ‘I love you’ in Latin.

Also, I want to add Elio’s line that follows:

‘I stared at him. It was good we were in public.’

One of my favourite lines from the book. So Elio. Such an Elio response.

I wrote another post about the postcard here.

(Can we also take a moment of silence for Oliver, who thought for all this time that Maynard was another one of Elio’s conquests.

I’ve often thought about this Maynard guy. Think of me someday.’

‘Your predecessor,’ I said to tease him. ‘No, nothing like that.’)

10. I remember everything (film/book)

Okay, so all of the aforementioned are ways I’m certain Elio and Oliver said they loved each other without saying ‘I love you’, but I desperately believe that ‘I remember everything’ is interchangeable with ‘I love you.’ It’s the The Fault in Our Stars ‘maybe forever will be our always’. It’s said at different times in the movie/book due to the different endings but both equally as important. I think it would have been an injustice for it not to have been in the movie, because it’s the line that solidifies the fact there is hope for Elio and Oliver.

Both placed at the ending, although in different situations, we know that it doesn’t matter what has happened in their separate (parallel lives, they’re never truly separate) lives, the events that took place, the people that they’ve met, it doesn’t matter because Oliver’s remembers everything. When they’re sitting in the tree Elio doubts Oliver by saying, ‘at least you’ll be elsewhere, where there are no memories.’ This was a harsh underestimation of Oliver. Isn’t it an even bigger testament of Oliver’s love that he is in a totally different world to the one that was made in Northern Italy yet he still loves Elio as much as he did in the Summer of 1983? Wasn’t it also Oliver that actively sought out something that he could take back to the States to remind him of Elio? He doesn’t forget, nor does he want to forget.

For me, this ‘I love you’ comes with the realisation that some love can never be forgotten. To me it says, I could make a thousand parallel lives to try and stop myself from loving you but I’ll always end up back here, loving you as much as I did then.

And this my friends, is why I for one believe that Oliver does in fact look Elio in the face, hold his gaze, and call him by his name.

#this is 3000 words #im not joking #im sweating im sobbing #cmbyn #call me by your name #elio x oliver #timothee chalamet #timothèe chalamet #armie hammer #luca guadagnino #andrè aciman #liv answers your questions #mymovies #mybooks #favouriteposts

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