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Illustration | Emily Fu

Exploring how romance is portrayed in Call Me by Your Name and The Big Sick

The past year has given us some tremendous movies, but two especially stood out for me—Call Me by Your Name and The Big Sick. After watching both films and discussing them with friends, I realized that they both had very unique approaches to depicting love on screen.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino, Call Me by Your Name follows Elio (Timothée Chalamet) as he spends his summer in Northern Italy with his parents. Oliver (Armie Hammer)—a grad student hired by Elio’s archeologist father (Michael Stuhlbarg)—arrives to live with them for the summer. Tension gradually builds between Elio and Oliver until they finally allow themselves to be together. The setting is mystical, enhanced by the cinematography, with long pans of the landscape peppered throughout the film. The score is curated perfectly with the scenes.

Elio has another relationship with a girl in the village, Marzia (Esther Garrel). As they explore their sexuality together, Elio fights his feelings for Oliver and feels conflicted. Over the course of the film, the townhouse in the Italian countryside begins to feel more and more like the Garden of Eden. There is a palpable sense of lust as passion develops, and the love story unfolds with forbidden fruit imagery.

One of Call Me by Your Name’s defining traits is that it is unapologetically artistic, especially in the way Elio discovers love and explores his sexuality. With Oliver, he is much more cautious than he is with Marzia. The paradise that Guadagnino creates allows for a heightened focus on feelings. The focus is on the love, the intrigue, the push and pull, Elio’s conflict and coming to terms with who he is, and by the end, his heartbreak. Long scenes pull at heartstrings as an unlikely friendship develops into a sexual relationship.

The Big Sick is the story of how comedian Kumail Nanjiani met his wife, Emily V. Gordon, and the film is written by the now-married couple. Soon after they met, Gordon was diagnosed with a severe infection and placed in a medically induced coma. The film presents an alternative way of depicting love in movies. The setting and the plot are important, but the love between Kumail and Emily (Zoe Kazan) is depicted through conversations, fights, laughter, and silence.

While Call Me by Your Name is unapologetically artistic, The Big Sick is unapologetically realistic—funny and extremely relatable. The Big Sick is a comedy, but I found myself engrossed in the relationships and characters that developed throughout the movie. I find myself returning to the scene where Emily’s father, Terry (Ray Romano), sleeps over at Kumail’s apartment. After much tension between Kumail and Emily’s family, we see the two men connecting through an intimate conversation. Terry tells Kumail, “Love isn’t easy— that’s why they call it love.” This statement carries out the scene’s true purpose of bringing Kumail and Terry closer together as they work through the tragedy of Emily’s illness.

Despite their differences in representing love, I was ultimately able to appreciate these two films for the same reasons. We see so much growth in Elio, and the final scene, after he learns Oliver has gotten engaged, is captivating. We stay with Elio in that moment and experience his catharsis. Such moments exist throughout The Big Sick, when a smile or shared silence takes us out of the comedy, and we experience the emotion of the characters on screen.

We feel a natural connection to love, both imperfect and realistic, and to longing. Exploring who we are can be accurately expressed through art and stylistic approaches that require interpretation. We feel the love in The Big Sick because the conversations are realistic; they could be conversations you have had yourself. We feel the love in Call Me by Your Name because we all interpret love differently but understand its sensation. When Elio hints at his feelings to Oliver, he refers to them as “the things that matter.” He never explicitly confesses his attraction, but the viewer feels what he is trying to say. When Oliver asks “What things that matter?” we all think of someone we love. We think about who matters to us.

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