I watched HBO's excellent (and gone too soon) series Looking last fall but I've been holding back on reviewing it because I wanted to pair it with a specific film: Luca Guadagnino's transcendent Call Me By Your Name.
Both the series and the film are about gay men. Although in Call Me By Your Name, homosexuality is more about a moment, a summer, a person and less about identity in the way it is in Looking.
I have a special place in my heart for gay men, which might be a weird and even offensive thing to say. But I was friends with a lot of gay guys in high school and gay male love and sexuality was a simultaneously safe and excitingly forbidden lens through which to explore, think about, and consider my own sexuality at a time when I wasn't ready to explore that part of me with actual real live dudes.
There's also something inherently political about queer love and sex that gives it something extra. Being openly queer, even today (especially today), is a risk. Being openly queer and openly in love is an act of courage and faith. And I don't mean to fetishize or pedestalize queer relationships because I think you could argue that to fall in love no matter what your identity is to be courageous. The essence of love is vulnerability, after all. But with queer people, the stakes are undoubtedly higher.
And both Looking and Call Me By Your Name so perfectly capture reality. And it will break your heart.
Call Me By Your Name is, above all, gorgeous. Set in northern Italy in 1983, the film is about Elio, the 17-year-old son of a professor of archaeology (Michael Stuhlbarg, playing a truly warm and loving father) who invites a graduate student to live with the family every summer and help with academic work. This summer, the lucky student is Oliver, a 24-year-old American with movie star looks and confidence and charm for days.
Elio is played by Timothee Chamalet, an up-and-coming young actor (who was also in Lady Bird this year) who is just SO GOOD in this role I want to explode. He plays 17 SO WELL (probably because he's only a few years past that tumultuous age). He captures what it's like to be a teen who is too smart for his own good--he's all limbs, constantly moving, pretending to be cool when really he's a mess of emotions. Give this kid an Oscar.
As for Armie Hammer...well, at first I thought he was miscast. Hammer is 31 years old and playing 24. He *looks* 31, and this is a bit of a problem considering that the age difference between the two leads borders on not okay (for what it's worth, the age of consent in Italy is 14...which is kind of fucked up, but that's another story). There's been a fuckton of ink spilled on whether or not CMBYN is a story of predation, but from what I saw, it wasn't. Consent is fully established between the characters, though given Chamalet's teenage looks and behaviors compared to Hammer's adult looks and behaviors, I did wonder if they could have cast a younger-looking actor to play Oliver. But maybe choosing a mature-looking and acting man to play Oliver was a deliberate choice?
As the film entered it's second half, I have to say that I came to appreciate Hammer's presence as an impossibly tall, impossibly handsome man who falls for the teenage Elio. The first half of the movie focuses a lot of Elio and his awkwardness around Oliver, but the second half takes the time to zero in on Oliver's mixed feelings about their sexual tension and eventual affair. Oliver, like Elio, has the capacity for heartbreak.
CMBYN draws out the "will they or won't they" tension for a long time and in a manner that feels realistic. Not only is Oliver older than Elio, he also kinda sorta works for Elio's dad. After the two share a kiss, Oliver holds back on going further, saying "We've been good. We haven't done anything to be ashamed of. I want to be good".
But, oh, does Oliver really want to be bad.
There's a lot of sex in CMBYN. It's not explicit--mostly kissing and tussling, as well as a memorable scene involving a peach--but if you're uncomfortable with men kissing men, you will not enjoy this movie. I was kind of glad no one was sitting next to me in the theatre, since watching this film felt like an incredibly intimate experience. But what I truly appreciated was how honest the portrayal of desire was, especially Elio's late-teenage horniness and longing. Nothing about it felt cliche or phony. And Michael Stuhlbarg gets a gut-wrenching monologue in the film where he encourages Elio (and the viewer) to accept and even embrace heartbreak as part of life--and consider yourself lucky for having felt it.
I left Call Me By Your Name with the feeling that there was something very special about it. In addition to the beautiful scenery, the on-point acting, and (not gonna lie) the blush-worthy sex...it just felt honest, and forgiving, and open-hearted more than anything else. It's a film about first love and I think we all understand that someone's first love is a treasure. We love with our entire hearts when we're young because we haven't yet learned to hold back and protect ourselves. I hope you'll see Call Me By Your Name because it's rare movie that is both brimming in heart and soul (and, ahem, body).
Grade: A+
***
Looking is most definitely NOT set in northern Italy in 1983. It's set in San Francisco in the 20-teens. It's the gay men's answer to Girls (only its wayyyyy fucking better than Girls). It's also not about first love. It's about men in their 30s and 40s who are opening their own businesses and moving in with partners, and--oh yeah, maybe also fucking their bosses? (spoiler alert?). These guys are way past the innocence of first love and loss of virginity. And yet, that same sense of open-heartedness and willingness to screw up and be vulnerable infuses the characters' personalities in a way you don't often see in television shows....especially when they're about ironic millennials who live life with a smirk.
Looking follows three friends: wide-eyed, optimistic video game designer Patrick (Jonathan Groff), temperamental artist Agustin (Frankie J. Alvarez), and 40-something (but still super hot) waiter-slash-trying to open his own restaurant Dom (Murray Bartlett). There's also Doris (Lauren Weedman), Dom's best friend and signature "faghag" of the group, although she elevates the demeaning stock character of "faghag" to something much more human and relatable (and she gets her own love story too).
Looking had two short seasons before it was brutally cut to make room for other bullshit on HBO (*coughGirlscough*) and then given a movie to wrap things up. I'm amazed at how much was accomplished in those seasons and final film but I'm also sad to think of how much more the characters could have been fleshed out if given more time.
Although all the characters get plenty of screen time, the main focus is on Patrick, which was a bit of a problem considering Patrick is a cisgender white male in a series that otherwise does a pretty good job of highlighting queer men of color. But I have to admit, I liked Patrick a lot--he was just such a good-hearted goofball in a way you don't see a lot on TV, especially in HBO shows. Cynicism is in style, and I appreciated Patrick's complete and utter lack of cynicism. It was a breath of fresh air.
Much of the series follows Patrick's two big romances: the first with Richie (Raul Castillo), a down-to-earth (and stupidly hot) barber. The second is with Kevin (Russell Tovey), Patrick's new boss who is British, has huge ears, and is in a relationship....but open to a little strange on the side. To me, the person whom Patrick should end up with is clear, but of course the show needs to put him through the ringer before he realizes which man was truly there for him all along.
A criticism lobbed at Looking was that it was boring. Which is weird because I binged all of it in like 3 days and cried for more. I liked that it wasn't as pretentious as Girls (I'm giving Girls, a show I was an apologist for, quite a bit of shit here, aren't I?) or as fast moving and dramatic as many shows are in our binge-watching culture. I enjoyed that fact that Looking focused on the minutiae of daily life: birthday parties, Halloween parties, drugs-and-sex-in-the-woods parties (gay men in San Francisco like parties, apparently). The plot arcs the characters follow--Patrick's love triangle, Agustin's relationship with an HIV positive man (Eddie, the best fucking character on the show), and Dom's new restaurant--are significant but also "mundane" in the sense that they are issues that everyone faces. Love problems, health problems, money problems. But seen through the specific lens of time, place, and identity. And, of course, friendship is at the heart of it all.
In a year where I watched so many wonderful TV shows (hi there, Twin Peaks: The Return, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and The Handmaid's Tale), there was no show that offered me such a sense of delight as Looking did. While many of the shows I watched this year had themes that ranged from important to heavy to downright brutal, Looking was an escape hatch that wasn't too light. It's anchored in reality, but looking (heh) upwards and into the future with a sense of hope and purpose. It really was gone too soon. I guess some shows are too good for this world.
Grade: A+
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