cimorene

There are spoilers for both the book and movie in here, obviously, although there are way more things that just won't make sense if you haven't seen/read.

{interjections while transcribing}

Aciman, Andre. Call Me by Your Name. Begun 8/12/17. Finished 12/12/17.

8/12: Wow, Elio the narrator really is THAT extra.

9/12: It's still kinda engaging but it's starting to feel overly long. Does this guy even HAVE a point? Is anything EVER going to happen? (Yes, I know, but there's been a lot of glances at the progress bar.)

12/12: I finished the book angry that Oliver was a jerk. Wax thinks Elio was just an unreliable narrator and that Oliver's actions follow naturally from his conversion to het life. But to me, doing that with so little contact, and not speaking honestly for Elio for fifteen years, seems rather cold, and to then after 15 years tell him that he's his heart of hearts seems just cruel. But Wax says that's the central question ("speak or die") and I've forgotten the referent of the quote.

Of course the book is well-advertised as nostalgic and bittersweet - not too bitter, that is - but I just... resist that. This narrative that a family being unsupportive means someone would have to "give up everything" - everything is like... generational wealth, social connections - things that people give up every day, that many peopl,e never had to begin with; and he already had his CV, again, something few people have to begin with! Not wanting to rock the boat full of your priviledge goody bag is actually NOT a perfectly natural and understandble choice. There ARE people who are really helpless against the tides of fate; he isn't.

Elio appears to respond okay, but not without feeling himself that it might be true [that there was nothing Oliver could do?]. But the closing line alludes to his feeling of betrayal - a betrayal of feeling only, perhaps.

13/12, second reading

• gender, bisexuality → becoming vs desiring a person [do you want to have sex with him or want to be him?]

• Dante (in hell)

• Shelley's death; Shelley's heart of hearts

• Dante himself for fear of taking any turns - leading the wrong life all along

• parallel lives/ a different time warp/ time: subconscious, love, memory, just layers - "time makes us sentimental; because of time we suffer". No first/last

• dying (to give), You'll kill him (Elio) if you stop // "What is life without this?"

• The man in the red bathing suit (also)

• "that heart and his shirt were all I'd ever have to show for my life"

• Dante meets his teacher in hell

• Alphonso was in Bangkok teaching Dante
• Why Bangkok/Thailand/Rome? Weird exoticization and othering? Rome = San Clemente = interconnected desires to become or have sex with

• eyes in window/balcony

• 'I was ashamed of what I felt for them' Alphonso - Thai= Oliver = selflessly sweet without irony or shame

• San Clemente=Thailand: what I wanted, what I didn't know I wanted, what I didn't want to know I wanted, what I'd always known I wanted. A miracle, or hell (=where Elio, Dente, meets his teacher) = all the sum of who he is (& the parts of him swear [they] bear [his] name // "Friendship?" comes with the job, 24

• Heraclitus {you can't cross the same stream twice}

• "sweetness" when Alphonso takes the clerk for a she

• TIME: "as though it had happened to a different me", "unreal" - "one could even grow old and not learn a thing but this"

• Long hair: clerk, Dante, Nefertiti (mask off) - "Good riddance" {she says}

• Mystery: Maynard the shy

• "he's more myself than I am"

• people live as theough we've got two lives to live (ref. parallel lives)

3/2/18, first viewing

☞ NO FACE JOURNEYS

{Elio's infractions tally:} 5

• OMG tinsel bead curtain!

• 80s fabric lol

• nice pool! {at their house}

• Ray-Bans

• his 14 mustache hairs

• {Oliver saying} "Hold this" {the water bottle, volleyball scene: he's the one who stole it when it was intended for someone else}

• ♥ Elio's red striped shirt

• MTV {RAI was playing in the background constantly according to

waxjism}

• teenagers, lol

• nice green bed

• "'S private..." -Elio

• nice green armchairs

♥ tiny sarcasm ♥

• fireplace=black void (frame) behind Oliver

• "drrivel" - Oliver {re: his book}

• hiddenness in his thesis {as innate in people to the Greeks or whatever}

• cool...

• Marzia's yellow glasses shirt {dance scene. groovy}

• lol silent

• gator collection {Elio's got as many Lacoste shirts as I have pairs of underwear}

• mirror in maze reading {When they go to see the statue drawn up, as they're walking towards the shore, Oliver and Elio's dad are walking and talking to each other - reading something? - and Elio is walking separately through the ruins like a mirror image of Oliver, but closer to the camera so the architecture frames Oliver behind him}

• mediated handshake {via statue! lol - but statues are used more than once symbolically to bridge the two of them} {their relationship is mediated partly by Chiara and Marzia at first}

• touching the statue {when they're both fondling it as it lies there, Oliver is fondling its face in an echo of how he touches Elio and Elio is fondling its torso, which echoes which parts of their respective bodies the camera loves the most. And Elio, with his face and his hair, kind of looks a little bit like the statue heads we see, although that parallel could also just be because we're in Elio's head so we see his face to read his emotions, while the camera makes love to Oliver's torso because Elio is a hormonal teenager and Oliver is shirtless}

• "same only by changing" vs "same encounter twice" - Heraclitus {this bit in Oliver's voiceover as Elio is alone in the house and flipping through the book - their encounter is one which they can't have twice both literally and figuratively - & they both stay themselves by changing}

• gross toes

• "but she's on her guard", "she senses a trap somewhere"~ {Elio's mom reading} {Elio is clearly the princess here, watching. I remember, when reading, considering that because Elio follows the passage by saying that he would never say anything like what the knight says, that they can each be compared to each part. But it's also clear that Oliver is reading the passage as an allegory and that he is the knight in this scenario when he asks Elio}

• Eeyore "knows nothing about the things that matter" {a very Eeyore delivery of this line}

• because there's no one else he can say this to but Oliver? - Because he's there?? {This kinda implies proximity vs affinity behind their pairing: the first opportunity, the first other gay man around etc - true to an extent?}

• VOTE SOCIALIST

• WHY can't they talk about those kinds of things, Oliver? {Is he just preserving himself? Not ready to talk after believing Elio didn't like him for such a long time, and still caught in disbelief, hence his 'are we talking about what I think we're talking about'?}

• prego = there ya go! {I literally misheard this line the first time}

• this is like a triathlon - {biking, then undressing, then swimming}

• TALKING HEADS {Elio and heads}

• :} {Does Elio care that much what Oliver thinks? - the 'why do you put yourself down' conversation}

• lol better now he's 17

• the wound is a metaphor... for love

• {in the background} "film is a mirror of reality"

• nosebleeds

• "Nu gick han också." {Oliver following Elio away from the nosebleed lunch}

• the foot fondles of let's-not-have-sex {yet} {Okay, I've used the phrase 'the leather corset of let's-not-have-sex' for years, ever since a recap or review of Attack of the Clones called it that, but I can't remember who said it, nor can I find it now with Google, so... let me know if you know who said it?}

• 'secretive readers' {per Marzia: hiddenness}

• "GROW UP, I'LL SEE YOU AT MIDNIGHT" -pirouette

• {Elio's notes} "det blev för mycket" "way over the top"

• curved statue bodies/daring you to desire {statues and them}

• I don't remember this scene in an attic {it was a tower}

• lol that shirt

• haha, Oliver's all flushed in his green Polo {Ralph Lauren shirt} {when making out}

• It's about loving oneself {the name swap} {when they call each other by their names it's like they're making love to themselves}

• lol, his dad ♥

• apparently swimtrunks have a zipper

• {Oliver's face journeys, all after they sleep together:} 8
• Lighting confirms this POV switch

• 'Oh... her' {Elio's face when Marzia appears when he's wearing Oliver's shirt}

• lol sunbathing infodump

• they also traded roles {Elio's wistfulness/longing/denial/pining⭤Oliver's ease/confidence/contentment}

• the one background person {in a shot focused on one of them in the foreground, the single background person having some significance: in the dance scene, Elio staring jealously had a couple making out behind him; when he's on the phone, there's a single little old lady with a hand fan}

• changed the conversation on the phone