On one level, it’s a movie about intelligent people wanting to fuck, who, to my ear, speak very coherently. The first half of the movie is Elio and Oliver’s foreplay. Pushing back and forth, testing boundaries, gathering information, etc. Classic romance stuff. They have a tearful goodbye at a train station, by God! That scene was invented for the movie, so the trope was probably invoked deliberately. If you want to call it a “pejorative ‘chick flick’” I suppose you can. Why is that a bad thing? I, for one, welcome more well-made homo romances played against a sumptuous period background. They fill a sad void in my lil gay heart.

I particularly liked this point: On one level, CMBYN is a movie where queerness does not involve risk or provoke harm. Sometimes that’s fucking enough. Bottom of the barrel, it’s nice to see queer characters who don’t suffer. That’s artistry plenty for me. CMBYN is imperfect. Great. I agree. But the good that’s there is artistry plenty for me.

it was just a movie about two people falling in love. They could have been any gender and the effect would have been the same.