Call Me by Your Name, Blue is the Warmest Color, and the Art of Loss in Gay Cinema

As a kid that grew up in a Southern Baptist home, the very idea of homosexuality was taboo.

Other than the occasional lecture about the perils of the sin and town gossip about supposed gay people, it just wasn’t something that was discussed outside of church.

And even when it was discussed in church, there was little nuance to the discussion. It was painted in black and white, right or wrong.

Those were my youthful experiences.

I grew, evolved as a person, learned, and met people along the way that changed me and shaped me into someone different.

I’ve watched everything I could from the grotesque Eraserhead to the uber-violent Irreversible to the overtly erotic Nymphomaniac Vol. I and II, but a gay love story was still something that I just never fucked with.

Perhaps it was a prejudice.

Perhaps there was some mental barrier that I struggled to break down.

Perhaps I simply never had an interest.

It wasn’t as if I had any aversions to love stories in general, but it was my eternal blind spot.

Gay cinema has been around long since before I was born, but the first time I remember it breaking into the public discussion was with Brokeback Mountain, a film I have still yet to see despite my affinity for all things Ang Lee.

I made a conscious decision to change that when I saw a film called Blue is the Warmest Color streaming on Netflix and read how highly decorated it was.

I don’t want to come off as dramatic and say my whole worldview was changed over the course of the next three hours, but damn, something broke in me (or maybe corrected itself, who knows) and stayed that way. Few movies, if any, have made me feel more about its characters and their relationships.

It’s about a young girl who feels something is wrong with her because feels nothing for the boys in her school, as if she’s broken. When she falls for a slightly older woman, a college student studying art, it was if she was whole for the first time in her life. But as with nearly all first loves, it ends, leaving behind a pain previously unbeknownst to them.

It goes through the whole gamut of feelings: curiosity, lust, reluctance, embarrassment, nervousness, acceptance, deep and desperate love, jealousy, heartbreak, shame, and acceptance once more.

The acting is simply sublime, and when the crescendo of the film its, you feel it with every fiber of your being. But we’ll get there.

Call Me by Your Name is eerily similar; fate finds 24-year-old Oliver (Armie Hammer) and 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) living together and falling in love, though it was reluctant at first.

The similarities between the two movies are many.

To understand or care about their relationship, there has to be an immersion of sorts into said relationship. You need to see who they were beforehand, who they become, and all of the intimate details that make that particular relationship unique.

For instance, you have these iconic dancing scenes from the movie.

Through participation or purely observation, the dancing engrosses the viewer and allows them to see where the relationships are to that point. There’s the carefree nature of Adele and Emma, and then there’s the lustful eyes of Elio.

There were scenes in which food was slaved over and eaten amorously (or not eaten amorously in terms of the infamous peach scene in Call My by Your Name), as if to imitate the voracious nature of their lovemaking.

Though much more prominent in Call Me by Your Name, the couples work at times to keep their relationship safe in the shadows, as if secrecy will save them.

These are basic daily functions and activities that open windows into the lovers’ souls and allow the viewer access to their psyche, how they interact, how they love.

In both cases, at least one of the two partners in the relationship is on the cusp of entering their first gay relationship, and they’re fucking scared to death.

The noticeable difference between Call Me by Your Name and Blue is the Warmest Colour is the lack of graphic sex in the former.

There are sexual scenes in which Elio and Oliver have their bodes intertwined, kissing vigorously as passion washes over them, but it is nothing in comparison to the lengthy scenes between Adele and Emma.

I wasn’t necessarily clamoring for Call Me by Your Name to get much more graphic, but I do think that would have taken the conclusion of the film to a more emotional level because of the depth of knowledge the viewer would have of the relationship.

Still, the passion between Elio and Oliver is strong and holds up to even the most finicky scrutiny.

All of these things build to a crescendo before the catalyst for change is presented.

In Blue is the Warmest Colour, Adele cheats on Emma with a man, the ultimate betrayal.

In Call Me by Your Name, Oliver has to return to the United States, leaving an ocean between them.

These catalysts give us the things we want the least but need the most: loss.

A happy ending is nice and tidy, and it can make you feel all warm and complete… but it disappears from the memory.

Loss brings pain; it humanizes people. When done right, it leaves a lasting impact when the viewer is struggling to come to grips with the blows the characters have been dealt.

And only through pain can there be reconciliation.

One such moment of loss came in Blue is the Warmest Colour when Adele is trying to come to grips with her new reality without Emma.

In the mesmerizing scene, Adele laid on the bench that she once modeled for Emma, grief painting her face, the cool Autumn breeze blowing around her, no blue—a color that signifies passion and happiness all throughout the film—in the frame at all.

It’s a truly heartbreaking scene, one that I often think back to when considering scenes that affected me most on an emotional level.

Call Me by Your Name did something similar with the final frame of the film.

After finding out that Oliver was going to marry a girl back home and resume the life he had prior to going to Italy, Elio sits in front of the roaring fireplace, lamenting the death of his relationship, grieving alone, light flickering across his face as the tears roll down his cheeks, credits rolling in the background.

It is a hauntingly beautiful, heart-breaking depiction of being less than.

Call Me by Your Name nailed its grand finale, and that shot has become (and will remain) the most important of the film.

Both films portray the stinging whip of the loss of one’s first love with intense accuracy, making it relatable to people of all colors and sexual orientations.

My sample size is small, yes, and I should probably familiarize myself further on the genre, but in these two instances in gay cinema, the feeling of loss is as strong as any character. It stands out like a monolith and emits waves out into the audience.

Loss transforms these characters from Utopian lovers to fully fleshed out human beings, people who feel the same things I have felt.

For me, they stop being gay people and were instead people. They stopped being in this large societal group and became individuals, real people.

My life has since been changed by gay people who have come into my life as both friends and family; so, it does seem odd now that I once had differing feelings on the subject.

But it goes to show exactly what kind of power cinema has as a tool for understanding other perspectives.