The scene which I found the most moving is when the girl Marzia, in a beautiful red dress, arrives on her bike in the hope to meet Elio again, and is so much disappointed with his dismissal of her. After four days not having contacted her, after two lovemakings, he rejects her point blank. He has not even taken the initiative to let her know that he is not interested in her anymore. The look of grief on her beautiful face is heartrendering.
And that is my main critic of the two characters of the movie: they are so insensitive to other people's feelings, and as such there is no identification of the viewer with them, gay or straight. If you have found out that you like boys more than girls, why giving girls hope that you will be her passionate lover. If anyone is a traitor in this movie, it is Elio, because of making love to Marzia, knowing he can not give her what she is prepared to give him, and Oliver, when he anounces that he is going to marry, and in 1983, that could only be to a girl.
Another flaw is in the parents: -do you think mother knows-, asked Elio his father (about his lovemaking with Oliver). I don't think so- is the answer. Of course she knows! Every mother knows intuitively that her son is gay, which is proved when she tries to console him on the way back from the station. Apperently the two parents don't talk to each other about their son, between smoking there cigarettes.
And that is my last point: why the cigarettes? In 1983 the negative effect of smoking on health was already widely known, and there you are, in beautiful Italy, a nice home with books, music, erudite guests, gardens and orchards; then follows a moving speech of the father to his gay son that he will be always there for him, while in fact after another ten years of smoking he will only be there for the oncologist or the cardiac care unit.
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