For whoever else who doesn't care to read through my Facebook longtypes:1. Elio's character was a stereotype of a privileged young white gay man-- an avatar for that cancer within the gay community, which is, in short, The Ideal Version Of A Gay Man-- young, white, cute, rich, confident, starved for cock-- the Ideal Version Of A Gay Man that makes not-young, not-white, not-cute, not-rich, not-confident, not-cock-starved gay individuals feel worthless
2. Elio's disconsolate nature-- "oh, we have to suffer through these summers in Italy"-- was insulting and made him, to me, an unsympathetic character-- by the end of the movie, when he's literally crying at the camera, I'm wondering: "what about Elio is meant to compel me to continue watching this movie, if not his young, cute, rich, confident, starved-for-cock whiteness?"-- even friends of mine reaching out to me about "should I see this movie?"-- I'd say "no, pass on it"-- they'd respond "but the young actor is SO HOT"
3. The dialogue was poorly written to the extreme. It was so continuously, terribly awful that I figured that James Ivory was able to force this project into production
4. The scenario of this movie-- a 17-year old cockslut seduces an older visiting grad student-- was essentially the plot line of a porno, or more specifically, a yaoi manga-- and yet this movie offered none of the erotic satisfaction of a porn-- the best scenes were the ones where Armie Hammer monologues about the etymology of the word "apricot"-- and there was one long shot of them motoring off into the distance that was nice too-- but yeah, it felt nearly identical to a porno but with no actual payoff
5. Italy looked ugly, the female characters were props, the chain smoking mom seemed like an extra from a Morrissey song, Elio's female lover was debased over breakfast ("I almost had sex with (girl) last night"), even the professor dad confesses that he too! had faggoty tendencies, the only shot of food was a boiled egg, that Psychedelic Furs song repeated itself more times than I can count, Armie Hammer can't act
Basically I thought Timothée Chalemet was pretty good tho
But yeah especially in comparison to "Moonlight" this felt risible, the fact that it's getting praised to the high heavens makes me feel like nobody is immune to empathizing with the plight of a young white cutegay-- and it makes me even more frustrated that we face twenty-to-fifty more years more of "Whites Only, Please" on people's Grindr pages
― flamboyant goon tie included, 7 January 2018
Having lived for a year in L.A. and seeing what the proximity-to-the-film-and-porn-industry does to non-white non-cute non-young gay men in that city (i.e. it segregates them, devalues them, and creates this fucking nightmare-pool of weirdness), I saw this movie as further propaganda to the primacy of the young white gay male form within the gay aesthetic value system
In short, I thought this film was dangerous and insulting and I shit on it
― flamboyant goon tie included, 7 January 2018
― 16, 35, DCP, Go! (sic), Thursday, 26 July 2018 21:16 (five years ago) link