4v291o

Watched on Tuesday May 20, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 8, 2025.

Chez Rohmer, l’amour se pense avant de se vivre, se formule avant de se consommer. Il s’y donne moins comme une étreinte que comme un dialogue, comme une tension permanente entre le désir et son ajournement. Dans L’Amour l’après-midi, dernier volet des Contes moraux, Rohmer poursuit son exploration de la psychologie masculine, encore au centre de ses préoccupations — la femme n’y est pas encore tout à fait héroïne, mais elle devient, déjà, une puissance agissante, dérangeante, irréductible à la fonction de muse ou d’objet. Frédéric aime sa vie ordonnée, son foyer paisible, sa femme douce et rassurante. Mais il aime plus encore l’idée qu’il pourrait, s’il le voulait, en sortir. Ce n’est pas l’infidélité qui le tente tant que la pensée de sa possibilité. Ce qu’il recherche, ce n’est pas l’ivresse de la chair, mais la jubilation du possible — ce moment suspendu entre la parole et l’acte, où tout reste à faire, et donc tout reste pur.

La tentation prend ici le visage de Chloé. Plus qu’un personnage, elle est une force — libre, imprévisible, étrangère aux codes de la vie bourgeoise. En l’introduisant dans l’univers bien cadré de Frédéric, Rohmer crée une faille. Chloé n’est pas simplement l’occasion d’un adultère : elle est l’incarnation d’un autre monde, d’une autre logique, celle du désir assumé, de la spontanéité sans justification. Là où Frédéric raisonne, temporise, ratiocine, elle agit. Et peu à peu, elle l’entraîne dans son sillage, dans ses chambres étroites, ses rendez-vous sans horaire, ses dialogues ambigus qui mènent — peut-être — à l’acte. Mais à l’approche du moment décisif, Frédéric recule. Il suffirait de suivre le fil, laissé par Chloé, pour sortir du labyrinthe intérieur et goûter enfin au réel. Mais il ne le fait pas.

Ce qui l’arrête n’est pas une morale sociale imposée de l’extérieur : c’est son propre univers mental. C’est là que Rohmer est le plus subtil — il ne peint pas un combat entre le bien et le mal, mais entre deux libertés, deux mondes. Chloé est libre, mais sa liberté est étrangère à celle de Frédéric. Elle est verticale, immédiate, presque vitale. La sienne est conditionnée, organisée, intérieure. Et cette incompatibilité se joue aussi dans les corps et les lieux : au début, Frédéric avance dans la foule avec une aisance rassurante, porté par le flux normé du quotidien. À la fin, il s’enfonce dans des espaces clos, sombres, où la lumière ne filtre plus. Rohmer filme cette descente non pas comme une chute, mais comme une mise à l’épreuve.

Les femmes dans ce film ne sont donc pas de simples objets de désir : elles sont des pôles d’attraction et de révélation. Hélène, la femme aimée mais absente, épouse discrète, représente la fusion entre l’univers mental de Frédéric et le réel — elle est le prolongement doux de son ordre intérieur. Elle ne l’interpelle pas, ne le bouleverse pas, mais elle le contient. À l’opposé, Chloé fracture ce monde : elle n’y entre pas, elle le bouscule. Et c’est sans doute ce qui effraie Frédéric : devoir partager son univers avec un autre, au lieu d’y projeter ses songes en solitaire.

Chez Rohmer, la femme, même encore vue par le prisme de l’homme, n’est jamais sans consistance. Elle n’est pas réduite à un archétype. Chloé souffre, doute, se heurte à sa propre solitude. Elle n’est pas un fantasme : elle est un corps, un présent, une réalité brute que Frédéric ne sait pas accueillir. Et c’est précisément en cela qu’elle agit, malgré elle, comme un révélateur. Ce n’est pas Chloé qui enferme Frédéric dans l’étroitesse de ses appartements ; c’est lui qui y projette l’étrangeté de son propre désir, lorsque ce désir n’est plus une idée, mais une personne.

Ainsi, le suspense de L’Amour l’après-midi n’est pas tant amoureux que mental, presque moral. Il se joue non pas dans l’accomplissement, mais dans l’écart. Ce que Frédéric fuit, ce n’est pas l’adultère, c’est la perte de la maîtrise. Ce qu’il aime, c’est ce moment où tout est encore possible, où il peut continuer à rêver sans trahir. Rohmer nous rappelle alors que la vraie limite ne vient pas du dehors, mais de l’intérieur. Il n’y a pas de censure sociale, pas de punition divine, pas de regard accusateur : seulement les parois invisibles de notre propre esprit, là où nos idées de liberté se heurtent à nos peurs, et nos fantasmes à notre incapacité d’agir.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Monday April 28, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 27, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 20, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 18, 2025.

Watched on Thursday April 17, 2025.

Watching Mulholland Drive was a fascinating experience. From the very beginning, I felt pulled into its strange, hypnotic rhythm — a world that felt both familiar and disorienting, where reality constantly shifted and nothing could be taken at face value. Rather than offering a clear, linear narrative, David Lynch crafts a dreamlike space where every detail feels symbolic, yet never fully explained. Characters transform, timelines blur, and meaning unfolds through emotion and atmosphere rather than logic. It’s a film that doesn’t ask to be solved so much as felt — one that invites the viewer to project their own questions and anxieties onto it. To understand Mulholland Drive is to recognize that it operates on the level of the unconscious: what we see on screen is not a linear plot, but a psychic landscape shaped by repression and fantasy. Though the film remain open to interpretation, this analysis is my attempt to piece together that psychological puzzle, focusing on the dream logic that drives the film and the symbolic carried by its characters, images, and narrative structure. Through her dream, Lynch constructs a distorted mirror of reality — one that reveals far more about Diane’s soul than any traditional narrative ever could.

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is a dreamlike puzzle box of a film, and at its heart lies the tragic story of Diane Selwyn — a failed actress in Los Angeles, consumed by jealousy, unfulfilled ambition, and guilt over the murder of her former lover, Camilla Rhodes. The film is split into two narrative planes: the first and longest part is a fantasy — an idealized dream Diane experiences in the moments before or after taking her own life — while the final section reveals the grim reality she was trying to escape. Through this dream, Diane reconstructs her life into something more bearable, where she is not a desperate, broken woman but a talented, innocent ingénue named Betty Elms. Betty arrives in Hollywood fresh-faced and full of hope, warmly welcomed into a world that, in reality, rejected Diane. She embodies the person Diane wishes she could have been — pure, successful, and adored. This split allows Lynch to explore how we rewrite our personal narratives to avoid confronting unbearable truths.

Into this dream steps Rita, a beautiful woman with amnesia who stumbles into Betty’s life after surviving a car crash on Mulholland Drive — the very place where, in real life, Camilla (Rita’s real-world counterpart) had cruelly and publicly humiliated Diane by announcing her engagement to a director Diane was once involved with. In Diane’s dream, however, Rita is stripped of her power, status, and independence. She is confused, vulnerable, and dependent on Betty — a reversal of their real-life dynamic. Rita, in the dream, becomes submissive and almost childlike, clinging to Betty for help and guidance. This shift in power reflects Diane’s deep longing for control, for emotional security, and for a version of Camilla who needs her rather than discards her. The dream allows Diane to rewrite their relationship into something comforting and reciprocal, rather than the painful, unequal affair it really was.

However, even within this fantasy, the cracks begin to show. Lynch introduces uncanny and surreal elements that signal a creeping collapse of Diane’s illusion. Chief among these is the enigmatic Cowboy — a haunting, expressionless figure who appears briefly in the dream to “advise” film director Adam Kesher. The Cowboy calmly tells Adam he must cast Camilla (the dream version of her), and warns him, “You will see me one more time if you do good. Two more times if you do bad.” On one level, the Cowboy represents the mysterious, faceless forces that Diane believes control Hollywood — those who decide who wins and who fails, who is chosen and who is forgotten. It’s a way for Diane to explain her own lack of success: it wasn’t because she wasn’t talented or hardworking, but because of a higher power — a corrupt, hidden authority pulling the strings. But on a deeper level, the Cowboy is a symbolic judge — an embodiment of Diane’s own moral conscience. His serene, watchful presence is chilling, as though he is always measuring, silently condemning. When he appears again near the end of the film, just before Diane's breakdown, he becomes a direct link to her guilt, a reminder that even in dreams, she cannot escape judgment.

Another key piece of Diane’s dream is the bizarre and almost comic hitman scene, where a young man attempts to kill someone and ends up bungling the job in a spectacularly absurd series of events. Though the scene plays like dark slapstick, it holds deep symbolic weight. The hitman, in this context, represents Diane’s repressed guilt and her psychological attempt to absolve herself of responsibility. In the “real world,” Diane hired this man to kill Camilla — a cold, deliberate act driven by pain and resentment. But in the dream, her subconscious reframes the killer as incompetent and unlucky, someone who fails at murder completely. It’s a fantasy of denial: maybe the hit didn’t happen. Maybe Camilla survived. Maybe Diane isn’t really to blame. This mental distortion is a classic mechanism of guilt — the desire to undo the unthinkable by rewriting it into absurdity.

But the hitman is not only a symbol of guilt — he also reflects Diane’s profound loss of control. In reality, arranging Camilla’s murder was her final, desperate attempt to reclaim power over a life spiraling out of her hands. Yet even in the dream, that control proves illusory. The hitman’s failed mission mirrors Diane’s inner recognition that violence and revenge could not bring her peace — they only unleashed more chaos. Just as the fantasy Betty is gradually undone by the forces she tries to resist, the hitman’s descent into farce reveals how Diane’s actions, however calculated, were doomed to unravel. Her psyche knows it, even if she cannot face it consciously.

Another haunting presence in Diane’s dream is the elderly couple, who first appear as kindly, ive figures. On the surface, they seem like benevolent, fairy-tale-like characters who encourage Betty as she embarks on her Hollywood journey. In this dream logic, they may represent the initial optimism and innocence with which Diane arrived in Los Angeles herself — full of hope, encouraged by others, and believing in the Hollywood dream. But their transformation is where the real meaning lies. Near the end of the film — as Diane's dream unravels and she spirals into guilt and madness — the old couple reappear, but grotesquely changed. They crawl out from beneath the door, miniature and grinning maniacally, like nightmarish phantoms. This jarring shift — from benign to demonic — reflects a common Lynchian motif: the duality of appearances and the terrifying undercurrent beneath the surface.On one level, the old couple represent Diane’s internalized voices of morality, innocence, and societal expectation — perhaps even her own family or upbringing. They remind her of the version of herself she once was or was expected to be: kind, pure, and full of promise. In this reading, their monstrous return reflects how those ideals have turned against her. The woman who arrived in LA with dreams has now orchestrated a murder. That innocence is gone, and the smiling couple becomes a mockery of the person she used to be — or failed to be. Their smiles in the final scene aren’t joyful anymore — they’re judging.The way they laugh eerily in the limo as Betty leaves the airport is exaggerated and unnatural, almost too perfect. That forced happiness is another illusion, another layer of performance. Diane may have felt she had to maintain a cheerful, hardworking exterior — while inside, she was deteriorating. When that mask breaks, those expectations come back to devour her. In a way, the old couple symbolize how Diane’s attempt to conform to the image of the “perfect” woman — one who is kind, sweet, and successful in Hollywood — ultimately leads to her emotional and moral downfall. More than anything, by the end of the film, the old couple represent Diane’s guilt and self-hatred — now unleashed and personified. It’s significant that they crawl out from the mysterious blue box, a symbol that marks the boundary between dream and reality. Once the box is opened and the illusion destroyed, these tiny figures — once tucked neatly into the dream — come back in horrific form. They are the “monsters” of repressed emotion, unleashed once she can no longer lie to herself. Their small size makes them feel like pests or psychological parasites, gnawing at her sanity. They are inescapable, persistent, and nightmarishly exaggerated — just like traumatic memory. When they force her into a corner, screaming, Diane is overtaken by them, and ultimately by what they represent: the truth.

Even after watching Mulholland Drive, there were still moments and symbols that left me confused — scenes that felt just out of reach, as if their meaning was hiding beneath layers of dream logic. But that sense of mystery is part of what makes the film so compelling. In the end, Mulholland Drive is not a mystery to be solved, but a haunting exploration of identity, loss, and the desperate fictions we create to escape pain. Through Diane’s dream, Lynch reveals how the mind distorts reality in the face of guilt and regret — how memory, desire, and denial blur into something both beautiful and terrifying. The film’s surreal structure, shifting characters, and symbolic imagery mirror the chaos of Diane’s inner world, making it not just a story about Hollywood, but about the human psyche itself. What lingered in my mind afterward was not certainty, but a strange sense of unease — a recognition that the most frightening monsters are the ones we carry within us.

Watched on Sunday April 20, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 18, 2025.

This was an unparalleled experience of cinematic art for me. In the Mood for Love was nothing short of mesmerizing—an exquisite blend of visual poetry, delicate emotion, and quiet longing. From the very first frame, it drew me into a world so perfectly crafted, so beautifully realized, that every moment felt timeless. This film isn’t just a love story; it’s an experience, a haunting reflection on what might have been, told with an elegance and restraint that leaves you both breathless and broken.

ITMFL is a story of yearning suspended in time—a portrait of two people bound not by what they share, but by what they cannot have. It’s within this space—this slow, deliberate unfolding—that the ache of longing and loneliness finds its full expression. Though surrounded by the bustle of 1960s Hong Kong, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan exist in their own suspended world. Brought together by the quiet devastation of betrayal, they find solace in each other’s presence, but they are always haunted by the boundaries they refuse to cross. Their connection is forged not through grand declarations, but in shared silence and mirrored routines—walks home through narrow alleys, half-spoken sentences and shared bowls of noodles. They are both quietly grieving lives they can’t return to, and futures they cannot claim. But just as their closeness deepens, they begin to pull away, retreating into the same emotional boundaries that brought them together. There is something deeply human in their restraint: a desire to stay dignified, to not become like the ones who hurt them, even as the weight of what might have been presses in around them. The repetition in the film—of movements, of music, of rain-soaked alleyways—creates a feeling of stasis, as if time is caught in a loop, circling back to the same unanswered questions. Their loneliness is not loud—it is quiet, repetitive, and persistent. They move through the world together, yet always alone, caught in a loop of unconsummated connection. In this stillness, the film captures something rare and hauntingly real: the pain of a love that never arrives, and the beauty found in its quiet, enduring absence.

This emotional restraint is mirrored in the film’s stylistic choices. Wong Kar-wai strips away melodrama, opting instead for precision and elegance. Everything in the film feels meticulously composed—from the pacing of dialogue to the framing of movement. The camera rarely intrudes; instead, it watches with a kind of quiet reverence, allowing emotion to simmer just beneath the surface. There is a kind of ritualistic rhythm to the way the characters live their lives: routines that repeat, days that blur, moments that circle back on themselves. This repetition becomes a language of its own, one that speaks to their hesitance, their fear of crossing lines. The result is a film that simmers rather than bursts. The love between Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan is never named aloud, never acted upon in the conventional sense—but it fills every frame, every silence, every breath. In a film where so much is left unsaid, every pause, every glance, and every lingering shot becomes a vessel for longing. In this way, the restraint doesn’t suffocate the emotion—it magnifies it. Every act of avoidance, every unspoken feeling, becomes loaded with meaning.

This quiet emotional current finds its most striking visual expression in the film’s cinematography. Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-Bin construct a visual world that feels both intimate and isolating. Characters are often framed through doorways, reflected in mirrors, seen through latticework or glass—constantly distanced, divided, and enclosed. This “frame within a frame” technique mirrors the emotional walls the characters build around themselves, as even in their moments of closeness, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are still apart. The camera lingers, often holding on a glance or a corridor just a second too long, allowing the audience to sit in the stillness and absorb the weight of what remains unsaid. Time in this world doesn’t flow so much as drift, looping back in slow motion, through repeated shots and recurring music, echoing the characters’ own emotional stasis. Slow-motion shots, particularly those of Mrs. Chan walking in her qipao through narrow hallways to the sound of “Yumeji’s Theme,” repeat like memories—obsessive, delicate, heartbreaking. Time stretches. Days blur. Nothing changes, and everything changes. Every visual choice, like every emotional one, is deliberate—shaping a film where the truest expressions of love are the ones that remain hidden.

In the Mood for Love doesn’t ask you to understand it—it asks you to feel it. To sit with its silences, to notice what is not said, and to mourn what is lost before it could even be found. It is a story about a moment, a missed chance, and the beauty that lives in the ache of almost.

This movie was absolutely mesmerizing. There are no words I can type that would possibly convey the deep dread that Cure will plant into your soul.

At its core, the film explores the theme of evil—something that is not born from a singular source or a personal vendetta, but instead something more pervasive, spreading through the minds of ordinary people. Unlike most horror films, Kurosawa doesn’t rely on overt grotesque imagery or clear-cut villains. Instead, he presents evil as a quiet, insidious force that seeps into the lives of ordinary people. Through the character of Mamiya, an enigmatic figure who hypnotizes others into committing brutal acts, Cure suggests that evil is not something external and monstrous, but rather something that can lie dormant within anyone. Mamiya does not appear as a traditional villain; instead, he represents a disturbing force that operates not through overt cruelty but through manipulation and suggestion. This aligns with Hannah Arendt’s "banality of evil," portraying evil not as monstrous, but as something that seeps into ordinary lives. The chilling idea that evil can be instilled in people without their conscious consent is one of the most unsettling aspects of the film. It raises the terrifying question of how much of our own actions are truly ours and how much is the result of influences beyond our understanding or control.

The theme of identity is intertwined with the depiction of evil in Cure. The victims of Mamiya’s influence lose their sense of self as they are coerced into committing murder. The film subtly asks, “What happens to a person when they no longer know who they are?” This loss of self is exemplified by the hypnotized killers, who are unable to the acts they’ve committed. They become mere vessels, their identities erased by the psychological force at play. This sense of dislocation and alienation is deeply unsettling, as it suggests that our identity, the very core of who we are, could be so fragile that it can be manipulated by forces we don’t even comprehend.

The film’s protagonist, Takabe, serves as the emotional anchor through which these themes are explored. A detective struggling with his own emotional turmoil—his troubled marriage and his obsession with the case—Takabe’s journey becomes a reflection of the larger existential questions raised by the film. As his investigation deepens, he begins to lose his sense of control, becoming increasingly disconnected from reality. Takabe’s gradual unraveling is both subtle and poignant. We see his transformation as a slow, creeping process, mirroring the psychological collapse of the murderers he investigates. The film hints that Takabe is on the verge of becoming another victim of Mamiya’s influence, suggesting that the line between good and evil is not as clear as we might hope. His descent into darkness is haunting in its inevitability, leaving us to wonder if Mamiya’s power over others is merely a reflection of the internal chaos within Takabe—and, by extension, within all of us.

Kuroawa's direction, too, is integral to the film’s unsettling atmosphere. The pacing is deliberate, never rushed, allowing the tension to build slowly and unnervingly. The film’s sparse dialogue, combined with its still, often claustrophobic cinematography, creates a sense of isolation that permeates every scene. There is a subtle discomfort in the silence, in the long, lingering shots of empty spaces, and in the lack of overt explanation for the violence that occurs. This minimalism in both dialogue and action adds to the eerie feeling that evil is something that exists not only in the visible actions of the characters but also in the spaces between them, in their isolation and emotional detachment.

Another striking aspect of Cure is the use of memory. The victims of Mamiya’s hypnosis cannot recall their violent acts, and even the detective himself becomes increasingly lost in his investigation, unable to distinguish what is real and what is an illusion. Memory in the film is portrayed as both a source of stability and a potential vulnerability. As the characters lose their grip on their memories and their sense of self, the lines between reality and illusion blur. The very act of ing becomes something unreliable, as if the past itself can be altered or erased by external forces. This erosion of memory becomes a metaphor for the loss of identity and control, reinforcing the idea that evil is not just about acts of violence, but about the unraveling of the self.

The structure of Cure is deliberately fragmented, mirroring the psychological disintegration of its characters. The non-linear narrative, which unfolds in a series of seemingly disconnected scenes, reflects the fractured nature of the characters’ minds. There’s a sense of disorientation throughout, as if the film itself is struggling to make sense of the events it depicts. This fragmented storytelling heightens the film's sense of unease, forcing the audience to question their own understanding of what is happening. The film’s ending, particularly, leaves us with more questions than answers, with the mystery unresolved and the boundaries between good and evil irreparably blurred.

In its subtlety and restraint, Cure is an extraordinary film that taps into the deepest, most unsettling corners of the human mind. It doesn’t offer easy resolutions or clear answers, but instead leaves us to grapple with the complexities of identity, memory, and evil. Through its atmospheric tension, haunting performances, and thought-provoking themes, Cure invites viewers to confront the darkest aspects of themselves—those parts of the psyche that can be manipulated, corrupted, and lost. In this sense, Cure is not just a psychological thriller, but a profound, disquieting meditation on what it means to be human.

Call Me by Your Name is the one film that truly changed me. From the very first time I watched it, something in me shifted. I’ve never seen a story that so delicately captures the quiet ache of first love, the confusion of self-discovery, and the bittersweet beauty of fleeting moments that mold the people we are destined to be. 

It irritates me so much when people dismiss this film and oversimplify it as a mere endorsement of pedophilia or grooming. Call Me by Your Name is not a story about exploitation — it is a story about an all-consuming love: the kind that upends your sense of self, and reveals something about who you are by allowing you to touch the essence of someone else's soul. It is about the hunger for connection, the terror of vulnerability, and the beauty — and heartbreak — of moments that are fleeting by nature. To flatten it into a moral panic is to ignore the tenderness with which it portrays emotional awakening, and the mutuality at the core of Elio and Oliver’s bond. 

Their relationship is one of mutual fascination, built not on symmetry, but on the rich tension of imbalance — of age, experience, and emotional readiness. From the beginning, Elio sees Oliver as both foreign and familiar: a figure of effortless confidence, an American stranger who disrupts the quiet rhythm of his Italian summer. Oliver is everything Elio is not — self-assured, enigmatic, physically expressive — and Elio is drawn to him with the kind of obsessive, electrified curiosity only someone in the throes of first love can feel. To Elio, Oliver is less a person at first and more a symbol: of desire, of adulthood, of freedom. Their bond is not built on declarations or defined roles, but on a slow, intimate unraveling of selves; they learn each other not through conversation alone, but through silences, glances, and the tension of what remains unsaid. Elio, caught in the fever dream of first love, seeks to consume Oliver — to understand him fully, to dissolve into him, to blur the line between desire and identity.

Oliver, in contrast, perceives Elio with a mix of affection, iration, and deep caution. He recognizes Elio’s intellect and sharpness immediately, but also senses his fragility — the rawness of someone who is still figuring out who he is. While he is undeniably drawn to Elio, Oliver’s initial instinct is to hold back, not because he lacks feeling, but because he is aware of the risks — emotional, ethical, societal. There’s guilt, too, not in the sense of wrongdoing, but in the weight of knowing that he can give Elio an unforgettable experience, but not permanence. And yet, Oliver is constantly pulled in. The more he tries to maintain emotional distance, the more he’s disarmed by Elio’s fierce hunger for intimacy. Oliver begins to see Elio not as a boy, but as a mirror of himself — of who he once was, or perhaps of who he could have been in another life, with fewer constraints.

What binds them is not just attraction, but a profound recognition — a mutual acknowledgment of something essential in the other, something they cannot access alone. In each other, they find both a sanctuary from the world and a kind of reckoning, a place where their most intimate selves can exist without pretense. The intimacy they share is so complete — so intense — that the line between them dissolves, culminating in the iconic request: “Call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine.” At its core, this exchange symbolizes a desire for total unity — not just physically but emotionally and psychologically. By asking Oliver to call him by his name, Elio is expressing the wish to collapse the boundaries between themselves. His request is a way of closing the distance between their identities, where names, which typically signify individuality, are used to blur the lines between who they are and who they are to each other. In this moment, identity becomes fluid and interchangeable, not defined by external expectations or societal constructs, but by the deep, shared connection between them. Their love is so all-encoming, so intertwined, that they long to fully inhabit one another’s identities. But that fusion exists in a suspended moment — like a fruit ripened too quickly, destined to fall. And yet, its impermanence does not diminish its meaning. If anything, it’s what makes it sacred. Both Elio and Oliver carry the echo of that summer with them, not as a regret, but as the memory of something real and formative — the rare kind of love that changes you, even after it ends.

Call Me by Your Name is more than just a film or a book; it is a poignant exploration of love’s fragility, the complexities of self-discovery, and the fleeting beauty of deep connections. The film doesn’t just capture a summer romance; it captures the essence of what it means to truly live, to feel, to be changed. Elio and Oliver’s relationship stands as a quiet yet powerful testament to love’s transformative power — a force that can both elevate and break us, shaping our identities and leaving an indelible mark on who we become. It reminds us that love, in its truest form, is not bound by time or societal expectations but exists in the profound emotional exchanges that define us. While the film beautifully brings these themes to life, I feel that the book offers an even deeper exploration of their inner worlds, enriched by its lyrical prose and thoughtful introspection.

Whether through the evocative lens of Luca Guadagnino’s direction or the haunting prose of André Aciman’s novel, Call Me by Your Name is a timeless reflection on the complexity of human connection, a reminder that even the most transient moments of love can shape the course of our lives forever.

Watched on Friday February 7, 2020.

Watched on Saturday February 18, 2023.

Watched on Thursday February 7, 2019.

Watched on Monday April 12, 2021.

Watched on Wednesday February 8, 2023.

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 12, 2020.

Watched on Tuesday March 19, 2019.

Watched on Friday July 12, 2019.

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 12, 2015.

Watched on Tuesday April 9, 2019.

Watched on Sunday March 10, 2024.

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

Watched on Saturday March 6, 2021.

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

Watched on Sunday February 16, 2020.

Watched on Wednesday February 14, 2024.

Watched on Tuesday January 14, 2020.

Watched on Sunday January 15, 2023.

Watched on Saturday February 12, 2022.

Watched on Saturday February 15, 2020.

Watched on Tuesday February 18, 2020.

Watched on Thursday March 12, 2020.

Watched on Monday April 19, 2021.

Watched on Friday January 18, 2019.

Watched on Saturday January 7, 2023.

• Stella
• Landscape in the Mist
• Eternity and a Day
• Life Is a Miracle
• Black Cat, White Cat
• Underground
• Mephisto
• Werckmeister Harmonies
• Son of Saul
• Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

...plus 45 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• La Promesse
• Life, and Nothing More…
• Perfect Days
• Shame
• The Piano Teacher
• As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
• Landscape in the Mist
• Maurice
• Shoplifters
• The Spirit of the Beehive

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Man Who Sleeps
• The Man from Earth
• The Face of Another
• Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
• The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
• Crimes and Misdemeanors
• Loving Vincent
• The Fire Within
• The Fountain
• My Dinner with Andre

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Double Life of Véronique

  
  

• The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
• Columbus
• In the Mood for Love
• Mirror
• Red Desert
• The Handmaiden
• The Favourite
• Last Year at Marienbad
• Stalker

...plus 21 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Red Balloon
• Tom and Jerry: The Movie
• The Wizard of Oz
• When Father Was Away on Business
• The Sound of Music
• The Chorus
• Return to Oz
• Monsieur Lazhar
• A Night in Casablanca
• Moby Dick

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Double Indemnity
• The Maltese Falcon
• Out of the Past
• Sudden Fear
• Sunset Boulevard
• Kiss Me Deadly
• The Third Man
• Detour
• Night and the City
• The Big Heat

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Out-Takes from the Life of a Happy Man
• The Poughkeepsie Tapes
• Ratcatcher
• Faces of Death
• Satantango
• Wedding Trough
• And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool.
• Ulysses' Gaze
• Simon Killer
• Wild Strawberries

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.