Call Me By Your Name (2017), set in the Italian countryside during the summer of 1983, displays a passionate and complex romantic relationship between 17-year-old Elio and his father’s research assistant, Oliver. Before returning to the states, Oliver must travel to a different city in Italy to complete his summer’s research. Elio’s mother, seeing how close Oliver and Elio have gotten, suggests the two of them travel together. Though they remain relatively discreet with their displays of affection, being away from the local town where people know them and could out them, or worse, brings out a carefree side to the lovers. We see them dancing, embracing, and kissing in alleyways; however, there is a sense that this newfound freedom is fleeting as their unavoidable farewell rapidly approaches.

Elio and Oliver dance in a cobblestoned alleyway and then embrace one another. Oliver breaks the embrace when he hears the song “Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs playing in the distance; earlier in the film, this was a song that both Elio and Oliver danced to at a party with female partners. The coincidence of hearing this song rings as a reminder of the moment’s impermanence—that the two of them have not always felt this free and will not always—but it simultaneously feels like a beautiful, cosmic sign that the two of them are connected in a meaningful way.

As they approached the strangers playing the song, the cement poles on Oliver’s left (in the green shirt) caught my eye. Their shape is phallic, and the coincidence of two, upright phallic structures juxtaposing Elio and Oliver’s figures left me with the impression that even in these moments where the two may “pass” as heterosexual, their gay identity is omnipresent.

The feminine stranger is dancing alone, as the masculine stranger leans against the car smoking a cigarette, effortlessly cool and unphased, he is the epitome of suave, heteronormative masculinity and sexuality. Oliver’s instinct to dance with the woman strikes me as a performance of his own claim to masculinity and sexuality—he is carefree, fun, and charismatic, which are qualities that drew Elio to him. Almost immediately as he dances with the woman, the music is interrupted by a church bell ringing.

Oliver grabs the woman’s arm, taking her to dance in front of the church where another version of the phallic symbol appears, this time with a chain attached. Oliver steps over this chain, as though crossing the threshold and submitting to the pressures of normativity. The heartbreaking conclusion to the film is Oliver calling Elio months after the end of summer to tell him he is getting married to a woman.

Oliver has found a “ball-and-chain,” while Elio observes from the sidelines. Both Elio and Oliver are intoxicated, but Elio feels it more than Oliver, which hints that Elio is more naively intoxicated by their summer romance, and optimistic in ways that further break his heart in the end. Questioning Elio’s naivety, one wonders if there is an element of dishonesty in their relationship. We find out that Oliver has been in an on-again-off-again relationship with his ultimate fiancé for three years. Was it Oliver’s plan all along to submit to heteronormativity? Presumably, Elio momentarily changed Oliver’s mind, but he ultimate crosses the threshold at this moment.

Elio gets sick from the alcohol, and Oliver’s initial response is to laugh at Elio. He’s separate from Elio—safe from the optics of homosexuality. Oliver seems to laugh because he is also intoxicated, and finds humor in Elio’s vulnerable, very human moment, but there is something more sinister that comes about upon further thinking. The power dynamics in their relationship are questionable—a teenage boy and an older, college-aged student (presumably Oliver is pursuing a master’s or PhD). Laughing at Elio feels twisted and inappropriate, considering this could be his first time sick from alcohol and is certainly his first moment drunk and vulnerable with an older, male lover.

Call Me By Your Name operates under the assumption that privilege does not eliminate all forms of heteropatriarchal oppression and pain. This assumption is fair, though the film leans into a potentially problematic romanticization of wealth, prestige, whiteness, and academia. An assumption within these moments is that for young, formative queer people, many (presumably around half) will make the decision to pass for straight, or many will have a formative queer experience with an older lover. Call Me By Your Name leaves the impression a sacrifice of queer identity for the security of “fitting in” was commonplace, and highlights an immense dependence on family values and upbringing as determining whether someone makes this choice or not—almost implying it is naïve to think someone will not make the choice to pass if given the option.

Call Me By Your Name is heartbreaking, and worth watching if you want to understand a dynamic, albeit a very privileged one, between young gay lovers in the 1980s. It is a beautiful film to watch and a beautiful representation of young love and heartbreak.