Review of Call Me by Your Name (2017) by Blueshawk — 28 Jan 2018

"Call Me By Your Name" is an awards-worthy masterpiece directed by Luca Gaudagnino. So beautifully crafted in every way that it survives its near-fatal flaw. When Stanley Kubrick's Nabokov-based "Lolita" came out in 1962, it was advertised as the erotic adventure of a "seductive" teen who you too (men) would not be able to resist. Now in 2018, just as we're buttressing our protections for children as well as adults from sexual exploitation, comes this romantic, exquisitely nuanced art, "Call Me By Your Name", that happens to repeat the horrible example of "Lolita". Seventeen year old Elio and his father's colleague, Oliver, fall in love. When Oliver leaves, both are heart-broken. Nearly every review I've read mentions "coltish" Elio's intellectual maturity and emotional vulnerability. Remarkably, his cosmopolitan parents and social network are a model of insight, empathy, discretion, and support. They will help Elio turn his horrible loss into new strengths. The directing, cinematography, and acting that beautifully bring these nuances together is so effective that many viewers will suspend their boundary on man-boy sex. In spite of our better judgement, some critics and many viewers become willing to believe a youth can seduce an adult; that the adult is not a culpable perpetrator.

Technicalities of statutory rape aside, it's the developmental difference between a young Central Nervous System and a mature CNS that makes Oliver's relationship with Elio such a high risk for harm. We viewers and reviewers have a responsibility to remind the artists we rightly respect that romanticizing, even brilliantly, man-boy love contributes to sexual exploitation of anyone. "Lolita" at its ending exposes the sexual exploitation of the teen as horrifically destructive. Frances McDormand says to her Priest in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", "...you join the club, Father, you share responsibility". As art is how the culture talks about itself, I believe she was talking to us about "Call Me By Your Name".