… anon I have an entire tag for that which is under /tagged/cmbyn-discourse, but very quickly because honestly this discourse should have burned even before existing:

one: any relationship can be manipulative. even in between people the same age. in itself it means nothing;

two: in italy the age of consent is fourteen except specific cases that imply people having sex with someone in a position of power directly over them. but as the coming-of age is eighteen, seventeen year-olds are more or less considered mentally closer to eighteen than fourteen, because sure af someone who is almost about to get to the age where you can drive/vote/drink without hiding your ID sure as hell would feel closer in attitude, interests etc. to an eighteen year-old than a fourteen year-old. seventeen yo people are almost adults, not children. which means that unless it’s an exceedingly problematic situation (ie 17yo person with their 40yo teacher or something of the kind) no one goes to assume that the 17yo can’t know what the fuck they’re doing, especially because a good amount of people have lost their v-card before they can vote;

three: twenty-four is nowhere near as bad as people on here assume and like sorry but if you take any random 17yo person ever and ask them ‘would you rather have casual sex with someone younger than you or with a hot university student in their mid-twenties’ 99,9% of them will tell you they’ll take the hot uni student and not the fifteen year-old in hormonal crisis, so here no one would think that the age gap is inherently problematic in lack of other issues first of all the seventeen year-old;

four: given that in the US people at seventeen can drive and enlist in the army (here they can’t do either, at most they smoke/drink under the radar and in theory it’s forbidden) I don’t see what the fuck is so terrible about a 17yo person banging a 24yo person vs a 17yo enlisting in the damned army or having a driving license like sex isn’t a bad thing and it doesn’t have to be *manipulation* and seven years of age gap is really not that much esp. when we’re discussing young adults;

five: listen guys I don’t wanna be that person esp. because I’m not lgbt and so on but like….. let’s be fucking real here:a) the author of the book has literally damn said: “I haven’t come across many bisexual characters,” says Aciman. “A lot of people believe they’re totally heterosexual or gay. I’ve never been one or the other. I couldn’t imagine writing about people whose sexuality is anything other than fluid.”, from which I would suppose he’s not straight;b) luca guadagnino, director of the damned movie, is gay, is out (which in italy is not a given) and last I know was dating a man;c) james ivory, writer of the damned movie who has also won the oscar for that one script, has been openly gay and out since the freaking seventies, his partner (ismail merchant) produced his movies, was behind maurice and a helluva lot of lgbt-themed movies and adaptations of e. m. forster’s work (forster ie another gay man who wrote books).now, I’m not bringing the actors into it because I don’t like to speculate about people’s sexualities, but most people behind that movie and who had most decisional say in it ie author of the original novel, director and script-writer, are, guess what, either gay men or fall under the mlm definition. now: can people just please let gay men/mlm make the fucking movies they want? like. I’m pretty damn sure that they would know best if their movie might be a bad influence or something.

also, guys not to be that person but as far as lgbt movies about gay men made by gay men or mlm go, cmbyn from what I gathered/I’ve been told (bc I still haven’t seen it yet I KNOW I DIDN’T HAVE TIME AT SOME POINT I WILL) is pretty much tame as hell. if anyone on here had watched any single movie of fassbinder’s or derek jarman or any single lgbt director from the 70s-90s they’d find way more problematic things than a seven-year age gap in between two people who have a damned summer fling and then go on their separate ways, and fyi at least one of the gay guys I know that I’ve heard discussing the movie irl said it was absolutely amazing except for the ending AAAH THE ENDING SUCKED and he obviously wanted them to end up together and not the way it ended. like. can we all… just….. chill on this especially when it’s a movie made by gay men about gay men and I’d assume they’d know the issue better than people who aren’t? thanks.

“On the train I told him about the day we thought he’d drowned and how I was determined to ask my father to round up as many fishermen as he could to go look for him, and when they found him, to light a pyre on our shore, while I grabbed Mafalda’s knife from the kitchen and ripped out his heart, because that heart and his shirt were all I’d ever have to show for my life. A heart and a shirt. His heart wrapped in a damp shirt—like Anchise’s fish.“  

It is so rare to find a film that is as true to the novel as this one.  That even the slightest of moments is recognized and complimented in the most clever and beautiful of ways.  With Anchise and his fish, we get a small glimpse at what Elio says of it in the book, detailing the backstory of ‘cor cordium’ and relating it to his own love with Oliver. We get a deeper look at Elio’s personality; his youth and loveliness, making fishy lips and smiling at Anchise.  It is terrific acting and subtle film-making, seemingly without a thought and yet it took my breath away.

If you missed it the first time around or just want to revisit some great CMBYN analysis, check out yet another fantastic piece from Seventh Row - this one’s about the physical aspects Timmy’s performance (from December 2017)

Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Elio reveals just how out of synch Elio’s words and actions are when it comes to his burgeoning desire for Oliver. Elio is a character who barely speaks; when he does, he’s rarely able to say what he means. Chalamet’s line readings convey how Elio’s precocious intelligence and bookish knowledge are a shield against his lack of life experience. As the son of an academic, Elio has faith that language can reveal the truth about the world; that words give ideas a discernible shape. But Oliver’s arrival completely dismantles this. Elio comes to understand his desire for Oliver through his body, not his mind.

...

Red: Bold, set in his ways, very grown up, almost griff and ill tempered. Stay away.

Yellow: Spritely, buoyant, funny, not without barbs. Don’t give in too easily. Might turn to red in no time.

Green: Which he seldom wore, acquiescent, eager to learn, eager to speak, sunny. Why wasn’t he always like this?

Blue: The afternoon he stepped into my room from the balcony, the day he massaged me, or when he picked up my glass and placed it next to me.

Firstly, because the peach is “bruised and damaged" the way a rape victim might be. Just because he uses rape as a metaphor to describe the state of the peach doesn’t mean the author is condoning rape. The same way we use “killed it” as an expression without condoning murder.

As for the lines: “It reminded me that I had probably looked no different on his bed last night after he’d come inside me the first time.” The key word here is “looked”. He’s putting himself in Oliver’s shoes and empathizing. He’s responding to Oliver’s fears from just a few pages earlier: “I just dread the thought of having messed you up.” 

We know Elio wasn’t raped because the novel is a first person account that details every minutia of his thoughts and feelings. The author is using the allusion of rape to make a nuanced point about Oliver’s state of mind, not Elio’s body.