The film is set in Northern Italy in 1983 before the AIDS crisis. The film is about a teenager named Elio Perlman who comes of age one summer. Oliver is his father's research assistant sent for a summer internship. Their romance slowly begins and unfolds during the film. Elio's parents must be the most enlightened parents ever. They even hint that they know about their son's sexuality before he tells them. They even send him and Oliver on a road trip together towards the end of the film. The romance is believable. The actors do their best to convey their attraction although somewhat discrete in Italy. Elio lives with his parents at a villa in Northern Italy year round. The summer flies by though as does the film. The film does have an abrupt ending about Oliver and Elio's relationship.

While the camera work and script were fine I had difficulty believing Oliver could find waif-like Elio physically attractive. Of course, many gay men find such slight bodies attractive. The ancient statute brought up from the sea had a better body than Elio. I admit Elio had a somewhat intellectual gravitas about him. Maybe that is what attracted the older Oliver. I wonder how this all would play out 30 years later - these days in 2018.

This movie will be loved by gay men and fans of patriarchal intellectualism, the lead character is arrogant, narcissistic and shallow to the core, as indeed are many of the other male characters, the love of the male seems to be the main thrust of the film, while female characters are dismissed generally as pathetic male worshipping puppies, in one scene the men are talking about the opportunity for Timothee Chalamets character to have sex with a your female, and of course he could have her whenever he wanted, though when an enquiry from the mother about the discussion she overhears but who is not present at the table but engaged in gardening, and not involved in the conversation, she is summarily dismissed by the male party when they change the subject, as if a mother in such a free spirited community would be somehow be shocked by the thought of her son engaging in a sexual relationship, as a man I found this whole scene quite demeaning to women, as was the general attitude to female roles in the movie, without one single strong female character throughout. I found the whole film shallow and its presentation of male intellectualism and demigod worshipping by even shallower female characters unbelievably sexist and demeaning, I'm amazed that this is presented as a love story, the lead character, rather than a bohemian, intellectual, romantic, is just a self absorbed, narcissistic waster in love with his own self importance, there's nothing to love about him at all. I cannot find anything to recommend this completely wasted opportunity. its shallow and sexist and, like its lead character, in love with its own self importance, with a subliminal message to women that you are only there to worship the men and do the chores, woeful.

First of all, beware of the fact that the film uses three languages, English, Italian and French. The French is hard to follow but yet from what I can hear it is some French. The Italian is for me an opera language and the Italian in this film does not have that music, a lot flatter. The English is standard American English and all foreign languages, I mean non-English languages are subtitled in English, still standard American English, what they call mid-Atlantic English.Second? this film is an adaptation of the eponymous novel but it cuts off all the last part, after the phone call on Hanukkah, the phone call being identified as being on Hanukah, which is from a Jew to a Jew a very cruel present, since the phone call tells Elio that the unforgettable affair he had with Oliver is not only finished but it has no hope for no future since Oliver is getting married. The point is not even that they were lovers, even friends should not behave like that. Friendship should have no end, but too often it does. And when the two friends are lovers, gay lovers mind you, that makes things a little bit tricky, but there are some more decent ways. In this case, Oliver is gross and cruel, "crudel" as they say in so many Italian operas. Third, the cutting off of the last part of the novel gives no future to Elio and we cannot know anything and of course, it makes the story a soap opera more than a real-life adventure. The last part showed that this affair had irreversible consequences for Elio. In the film, we assume it will. But the novel also made Elio meet Oliver again many years later in the USA on Oliver's campus. And that profound ending that demonstrates how impossible it is to forget what happens to you at 17 and for a young adult what happens to you with a 17-year old boy, who should have known better: just the evasive eyes of Oliver when the train is leaving. He had already closed the chapter. Not so easy in the novel. There might be some hope after all.But fifth, we miss the main conclusion of Elio's at the end of the novel:"You are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you died, my life as I know it, the me who is speaking with you now, will cease to exist. Sometimes I have this awful picture of waking up in our house in B. and, looking out to the sea, hearing the news from the waves themselves, He died last night. We missed out on so much. It was a coma. Tomorrow I go back to my coma, and you to yours. Pardon, I didn't mean to offend - I am sure yours is no coma."I said hope, yes but for Elio, because Oliver's response is ethically and empathetically disquieting: "No, a parallel life."The film then is beautiful all along, though slightly more discreet about the real sex and going on the bike on the following morning but it remains very sentimental and superficial. Such a friendship, especially if love is added, between a younger man and a slightly (or much) older man raises many questions about the effects on both men and what such a friendship or an affair can enable both men to do that they couldn't have done before, but also what it can block that could have been brought to life. And I am not only speaking of girls and women, marriage or not marriage. I like the film but I am frustrated and I find it too emotional for a soft-hearted audience. Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU