INT. ELIO’S/OLIVER’S ROOM - PERLMAN VILLA - DAY 1
ELIO goes to the window and looks down. A car pulls up below, blowing up clouds of dust, and stops at the villa’s main entrance. A young man steps out of the car, wearing a billowy bright blue shirt with a wide-open collar, sunglasses. This is OLIVER, 25. He is followed by the handy-man and gardener of the house ANCHISE.
ELIO: L'usurpateur. (The usurper)
INT. LIVING ROOM - PERLMAN VILLA - DAY 15
I knew exactly what phrase in the piece must have stirred him the first time, and each time I played it, I was sending it to him as a little gift, because it was really dedicated to him, as a token of something very beautiful in me that would take no genius to figure out and that urged me to throw in an extended cadenza. Just for him.
We were—and he must have recognized the signs long before I did— flirting.
Later that evening in my diary, I wrote: I was exaggerating when I said I thought you hated the piece. What I meant to say was: I thought you hated me. I was hoping you’d persuade me of the opposite—and you did, for a while. Why won’t I believe it tomorrow morning?
One day, while I was practicing my guitar at what had become “my table” in the back garden by the pool and he was lying nearby on the grass, I recognized the gaze right away. He had been staring at me while I was focusing on the fingerboard, and when I suddenly raised my face to see if he liked what I was playing, there it was: cutting, cruel, like a glistening blade instantly retracted the moment its victim caught sight of it. He gave me a bland smile, as though to say, No point hiding it now.
Stay away from him.
He must have noticed I was shaken and in an effort to make it up to me began asking me questions about the guitar. I was too much on my guard to answer him with candor. Meanwhile, hearing me scramble for answers made him suspect that perhaps more was amiss than I was showing. “Don’t bother explaining. Just play it again.” But I thought you hated it. Hated it? Whatever gave you that idea? We argued back and forth. “Just play it, will you?” “The same one?” “The same one.”
I stood up and walked into the living room, leaving the large French windows open so that he might hear me play it on the piano. He followed me halfway and, leaning on the windows’ wooden frame, listened for a while.
“You changed it. It’s not the same. What did you do to it?”
“I just played it the way Liszt would have played it had he jimmied around with it.”
“Just play it again, please!”
I liked the way he feigned exasperation. So I started playing the piece again.
After a while: “I can’t believe you changed it again.”
“Well, not by much. This is just how Busoni would have played it if he had altered Liszt’s version.”
“Can’t you just play the Bach the way Bach wrote it?”
“But Bach never wrote it for guitar. He may not even have written it for the harpsichord. In fact, we’re not even sure it’s by Bach at all.”
“Forget I asked.”
“Okay, okay. No need to get so worked up,” I said. It was my turn to feign grudging acquiescence. “This is the Bach as transcribed by me without Busoni and Liszt. It’s a very young Bach and it’s dedicated to his brother.”
I knew exactly what phrase in the piece must have stirred him the first time, and each time I played it, I was sending it to him as a little gift, because it was really dedicated to him, as a token of something very beautiful in me that would take no genius to figure out and that urged me to throw in an extended cadenza. Just for him.
We were—and he must have recognized the signs long before I did— flirting.
Later that evening in my diary, I wrote: I was exaggerating when I said I thought you hated the piece. What I meant to say was: I thought you hated me. I was hoping you’d persuade me of the opposite—and you did, for a while. Why won’t I believe it tomorrow morning?
ELIO plays the piece on the piano. OLIVER leans on the door looking in. The music sounds very different from when he played it on his guitar.
OLIVER: You changed it. What did you do to it? Is it Bach?
ELIO: I just played it the way Liszt would have played it if he’d jimmied around with it.
OLIVER: Just play it again, please!
ELIO begins playing the piece again. OLIVER listens, then speaks:
OLIVER: I can’t believe you changed it again.
ELIO: Not by much. That’s how Busoni would've played it if he’d altered Liszt’s version.
OLIVER: Can’t you just play the Bach the way Bach wrote it?
ELIO: Bach never wrote it for guitar. In fact, we’re not even sure it’s Bach at all.
OLIVER: Forget I asked.
ELIO: Okay, okay. No need to get so worked up.
ELIO begins to play the Bach in its original form. OLIVER, who had turned away, comes back to the door. ELIO says, softly, over his playing:
ELIO: It’s young Bach, he dedicated it to his brother.
He plays it beautifully, as if sending it to OLIVER as a gift.
INT. ELIO’S BEDROOM - PERLMAN VILLA - LATER 16
ELIO is writing his diary, the wind is moving the curtains. He then puts the open diary on the bed and goes into the shared bathroom to pee, shutting the door behind him. The camera moves close on to the diary and we read: “...I was too harsh when I told him I thought he hated Bach...”
The wind blows the pages of the little book, then dies down so that we can go on reading: “What I wanted to say was that I thought he hated me...”
INT. LIVING ROOM - PERLMAN VILLA - DAY 49
A handsome young knight is madly in love with a princess. She too is in love with him, though she seems not to be entirely aware of it. Despite the friendship that blossoms between them, or perhaps because of that very friendship, the young knight finds himself so humbled and speechless that he is totally unable to bring up the subject of his love. One day he asks the princess point-blank: ‘Is it better to speak or die?'
While reading in my father’s library one evening, I came upon the story of a handsome young knight who is madly in love with a princess. She too is in love with him, though she seems not to be entirely aware of it, and despite the friendship that blossoms between them, or perhaps because of that very friendship, he finds himself so humbled and speechless owing to her forbidding candor that he is totally unable to bring up the subject of his love.
One day he asks her point-blank: “Is it better to speak or die?”
I’d never even have the courage to ask such a question.
But what I’d spoken into his pillow revealed to me that, at least for a moment, I’d rehearsed the truth, gotten it out into the open, that I had in fact enjoyed speaking it, and if he happened to pass by at the very moment I was muttering things I wouldn’t have dared speak to my own face in the mirror, I wouldn’t have cared, wouldn’t have minded—let him know, let him see, let him pass judgment too if he wants—just don’t tell the world—“even if you’re the world for me right now, even if in your eyes stands a horrified, scornful world. That steely look of yours, Oliver, I’d rather die than face it once I’ve told you.”
Inside the villa the three PERLMANS are sitting on a row on a big couch as the lights flicker.
ANNELLA: Have you seen my Heptameron?
PERLMAN: It must be over there...
ANNELLA finds the book.
ANNELLA: This version is in German, but I’ll translate. Ein gut aus sehender junger Ritter ist wahnsinnig verliebt in eine Prinzessin. Sie auch ist in ihn verliebt...A handsome young knight is madly in love with a princess. She too is in love with him...obwohl es so scheint, als sei sie sich nicht vollig ihrer eigenen Liebe bewusst...though she seems not to be entirely aware of it. Despite the friendship... Freundschaft... that blossoms between them, or perhaps because of that very friendship, the young knight finds himself so humbled and speechless that he is totally unable to bring up the subject of his love. One day he asks the princess point-blank: Ich bitte euch ratet mir was besser ist... reden oder sterben. ‘Is it better to speak or die’.
The lights suddenly all go out in the house; the music from a long-playing record dies to a stop. There is a shout in the kitchen, MAFALDA.
ELIO: (still thinking about the Knight and the princess) I’d never have the courage to ask such a question.
PERLMAN: We were your age once. The things you feel and think only you have felt, believe me, We’ve suffered through all of them, and more than once - some you never get over and others you’re as ignorant about as you are today.
ANNELLA: (nodding in agreement) Make new friends if the old ones don’t interest you but stop haning around the house all the time. Books, books, books, always books, et toutes ces partitions... (is all those score books)... play more tennis, go dancing more often with Chiara and Marzia - tu les aimes no? (you like them, don’t you?) Get to know people...
PERLMAN: Find out why others are so necessary in life and not just foreign bodies to be sidled up to. They have been sitting in near darkness. The rain beats against the window panes.
ANNELLA spreads an afghan over the knees of the three of them, saying “It’s getting cold in here”. Just then the lights come back on and the music resumes. She looks at her son and runs her fingers through his hair tenderly.
ANNELLA: Fai anche pazzie se devi. (Do crazy things if you must.) (Fais des folies, s’il le faut.)
EXT. COUNTRY ROAD/SPRINGS - FONTANILI GAVERINE - DAY 58
Usually, I’d cast a glance and then look away—look away because I didn’t want to swim in the lovely, clear pool of his eyes unless I’d been invited to—and I never waited long enough to know whether I was even wanted there; look away because I was too scared to stare anyone back; look away because I didn’t want to give anything away; look away because I couldn’t acknowledge how much he mattered. Look away because that steely gaze of his always reminded me of how tall he stood and how far below him I ranked. Now, in the silence of the moment, I stared back, not to defy him, or to show I wasn’t shy any longer, but to surrender, to tell him this is who I am, this is who you are, this is what I want, there is nothing but truth between us now, and where there’s truth there are no barriers, no shifty glances, and if nothing comes of this, let it never be said that either of us was unaware of what might happen.
“Do you like being alone?” he asked.
“No. No one likes being alone. But I’ve learned how to live with it.”
“Are you always so very wise?” he asked. Was he about to adopt a condescending, pre-lecture tone before joining everyone else on my needing to get out more, make more friends, and, having made friends, not to be so selfish with them? Or was this a preamble to his role as shrink/part-time- friend-of-the-family? Or was I yet again misreading him completely?
“I’m not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and I know how to string words together—it doesn’t mean I know how to speak about the things that matter most to me.”
“But you’re doing it now—in a way.”
“Yes, in a way—that’s how I always say things: in a way.”
Staring out at the offing so as not to look at him, I sat down on the grass and noticed he was crouching a few yards away from me on the tips of his toes, as though he would any moment now spring to his feet and go back to where we’d left our bicycles.
It never occurred to me that I had brought him here not just to show him my little world, but to ask my little world to let him in, so that the place where I came to be alone on summer afternoons would get to know him, judge him, see if he fitted in, take him in, so that I might come back here and remember. Here I would come to escape the known world and seek another of my own invention; I was basically introducing him to my launchpad. All I had to do was list the works I’d read here and he’d know all the places I’d traveled to.
“I like the way you say things. Why are you always putting yourself down?”
“I shrugged my shoulders. Was he criticizing me for criticizing myself?
“I don’t know. So you won’t, I suppose.”
“Are you so scared of what others think?”
I shook my head. But I didn’t know the answer. Or perhaps the answer was so obvious that I didn’t have to answer. It was moments such as these that left me feeling so vulnerable, so naked. Push me, make me nervous, and, unless I push you back, you’ve already found me out. No, I had nothing to say in reply. But I wasn’t moving either. My impulse was to let him ride home by himself. I’d be home in time for lunch.
He was waiting for me to say something. He was staring at me.
This, I think, is the first time I dared myself to stare back at him. Usually, I’d cast a glance and then look away—look away because I didn’t want to swim in the lovely, clear pool of his eyes unless I’d been invited to—and I never waited long enough to know whether I was even wanted there; look away because I was too scared to stare anyone back; look away because I didn’t want to give anything away; look away because I couldn’t acknowledge how much he mattered. Look away because that steely gaze of his always reminded me of how tall he stood and how far below him I ranked. Now, in the silence of the moment, I stared back, not to defy him, or to show I wasn’t shy any longer, but to surrender, to tell him this is who I am, this is who you are, this is what I want, there is nothing but truth between us now, and where there’s truth there are no barriers, no shifty glances, and if nothing comes of this, let it never be said that either of us was unaware of what might happen. I hadn’t a hope left. And maybe I stared back because there wasn’t a thing to lose now. I stared back with the all-knowing, I-dare-you-to-kiss-me gaze of someone who both challenges and flees with one and the same gesture.
“You’re making things very difficult for me.”
Was he by any chance referring to our staring?
I didn’t back down. Neither did he. Yes, he was referring to our staring.
“Why am I making things difficult?”
“My heart was beating too fast for me to speak coherently. I wasn’t even ashamed of showing how flushed I was. So let him know, let him.
“Because it would be very wrong.”
“Would?” I asked.
Was there a ray of hope, then?
He sat down on the grass, then lay down on his back, his arms under his head, as he stared at the sky.
“Yes, would. I’m not going to pretend this hasn’t crossed my mind.”
“I’d be the last to know.”
“Well, it has. There! What did you think was going on?”
“Going on?” I fumbled by way of a question. “Nothing.” I thought about it some more. “Nothing,” I repeated, as if what I was vaguely beginning to get a hint of was so amorphous that it could just as easily be shoved away by my repeated “nothing” and thereby fill the unbearable gaps of silence.
“Nothing.”
OLIVER: Do you like being alone?
ELIO: No one likes being alone. But I’ve learned how to live with it.
OLIVER: Are you always so wise? So very wise?
ELIO: I’m not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and I know how to string words together - it doesn’t mean I know how to speak about the things - about the things that matter most to me.
OLIVER: But you’re doing it now - in a way.
ELIO: Yes, in a way - that’s how I always say things: in a way.
Staring out at the view so as not to look at him, ELIO sits down on the grass. OLIVER crouches a few yards away from ELIO on the tips of his toes, as if at any moment he might spring to his feet and go back to the bicycles.
ELIO: I come here to escape the known world.
OLIVER: I like the way you say things. Why are you always putting yourself down?
ELIO: (shrugging) I don’t know. So you won’t, I suppose.
OLIVER: Are you so scared of what others think? Or what I think?
ELIO shakes his head. OLIVER waits for ELIO to say something. He stares at him.
In the silence of the moment, ELIO stares back. It is the first time ELIO has dared to stare back at OLIVER openly. Before this moment he has always cast a glance, then looked away from Oliver’s steely gaze. It is as if, finally, ELIO is saying to Oliver: This is who I am, this is who you are, this is what I want. He stares back with an I-dare-you-to-kiss-me gaze.
OLIVER: You’re making things very difficult for me.
ELIO doesn’t back down. Neither does OLIVER.
ELIO: Why am I making things difficult?
OLIVER: Because it would be very wrong.
ELIO: Would?
OLIVER sits down on the grass, then lies down on his back, his arms under his head, staring at the sky.
OLIVER: Yes, would. I’m not going to pretend this hasn’t crossed my mind.
ELIO: I’d be the last to know.
OLIVER: Well, it has. There! What did you think was going on?
ELIO: Going on? Nothing...nothing.
INT. ELIO’S BEDROOM - PERLMAN VILLA - NIGHT 67
“Traitor, I thought as I waited to hear his bedroom door squeak open and squeak shut. Traitor. How easily we forget. I’ll stick around. Sure. Liar.
It never crossed my mind that I too was a traitor, that somewhere on a beach near her home a girl had waited for me tonight, as she waited every night now, and that I, like Oliver, hadn’t given her a second thought.
I heard him step onto the landing. I had left my bedroom door intentionally ajar, hoping that the light from the foyer would stream in just enough to reveal my body. My face was turned toward the wall. It was up to him. He walked past my room, didn’t stop. Didn’t even hesitate. Nothing.
I heard his door shut.
Barely a few minutes later, he opened it. My heart jumped. By now I was sweating and could feel the dampness on my pillow. I heard a few more footsteps. Then I heard the bathroom door click shut. If he ran the shower it meant he’d had sex. I heard the bathtub and then the shower run. Traitor. Traitor.”
Late night. ELIO is sitting at his desk, wide awake. He has left the bathroom door intentionally ajar, hoping that the light from the foyer might stream in just enough to reveal his body. As ELIO hears OLIVER step onto the landing in the hall, he jumps back in his bed pretending to be asleep.
OLIVER walks past Elio’s room without stopping, without even a hesitation, and goes into his own room and shuts the door.
A few moments later ELIO hears Oliver open the door from his bedroom into their common bathroom. Then he hears the door into his own room from the bathroom click shut, as if being locked. ELIO sits up in bed.
ELIO: (to himself, under his breath) Traitor. Traitor!
INT. PROFESSOR PERLMAN’S STUDY - PERLMAN VILLA - DAY 88
Their muscles are firm- look at his stomach for example- and yet never a straight body in these statues, they are all curves, sometimes impossibly curved and so nonchalant, hence their ageless ambiguity. As if they’re daring you to desire them.
OLIVER and PROFESSOR PERLMAN project images of classical athletes in his study. On the screen is a close-up detail of a bronze navel in an impressively muscled stomach. There are several of these, and PERLMAN points out stylistic differences.
PERLMAN: (pointing at the images) Beautiful aren’t they?
OLIVER: They’re amazing. But these are far more... sensual.
PERLMAN: Because these are more Hellenistic than fifth-century Athenian, most likely sculpted under the influence of the greatest sculptor in antiquity: Praxiteles. Their muscles are firm- look at his stomach for example- and yet never a straight body in these statues, they are all curves, sometimes impossibly curved and so nonchalant, hence their ageless ambiguity. As if they’re daring you to desire them.
OLIVER, not unmoved by these images, grins, pats his own belly and sucks in.
EXT. BINARIO - STAZIONE DI CLUSONE - DAY 134
It is the sound of a train arriving at the station, on the main platform.
ELIO and OLIVER together look at the train come to a stop. ELIO is wearing Oliver’s blue shirt. On the platform are a few travellers ready to leave. Oliver's bags are those for his trip back home; they are about to say goodbye.
The train doors open, some people come out, others get in while saying their goodbyes to their counterparts.
Elio and Oliver aren't moving, they try to delay the inevitable, if only for a few seconds. The voice on the intercom informs that the Express train for Rome is about to depart from Platform 1.
ELIO: Did you get your passport?
OLIVER: Yeah, I did.
The travelers are all on the train, except for Oliver. The conductor is a few cars down, looking at his watch. A moment of suspended, cruel silence.
OLIVER: There's emptiness behind your eyes/ there's dust in our hearts/ Love my way, it's a new road...
Elio listens to these words, which Oliver starts to sing sweetly, whispering.
OLIVER: I follow where my mind goes, so swallow all your tears, my love/ And put on your new face/ You can never win or lose, if you don't run the race.
They hug. OLIVER grabs his bags and enters the train.
INT. PERLMAN STUDIO - PERLMAN VILLA - EVENING/NIGHT 141
But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most of us can’t help but live as though we’ve got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there’s only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there’s sorrow. I don’t envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.
“You two had a nice friendship.”
This was far bolder than anything I anticipated.
“Yes,” I replied, trying to leave my “yes” hanging in midair as though buoyed by the rise of a negative qualifier that was ultimately suppressed. I just hoped he hadn’t caught the mildly hostile, evasive, seemingly fatigued Yes, and so? in my voice.
I also hoped, though, that he’d seize the opportunity of the unstated Yes, and so? in my answer to chide me, as he so often did, for being harsh or indifferent or way too critical of people who had every reason to consider themselves my friends. He might then add his usual bromide about how rare good friendships were and that, even if people proved difficult to be with after a while, still, most meant well and each had something good to impart. No man is an island, can’t shut yourself away from others, people need people, blah, blah.
But I had guessed wrong.
“You’re too smart not to know how rare, how special, what you two had was.”
“Oliver was Oliver,” I said, as if that summed things up.
“Parce que c’etait lui, parce que c’etait moi,” “my father added, quoting Montaigne’s all-encompassing explanation for his friendship with Etienne de la Boetie.
I was thinking, instead, of Emily Bronte’s words: because “he’s more myself than I am.”
“Oliver may be very intelligent—,” I began. Once again, the disingenuous rise in intonation announced a damning but hanging invisibly between us. Anything not to let my father lead me any further down this road.
“Intelligent? He was more than intelligent. What you two had had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. He was good, and you were both lucky to have found each other, because you too are good.”
My father had never spoken of goodness this way before. It disarmed me.
“I think he was better than me, Papa.”
“I am sure he’d say the same about you, which flatters the two of you.”
He was about to tap his cigarette and, in leaning toward the ashtray, he reached out and touched my hand.
“What lies ahead is going to be very difficult,” he started to say, altering his voice. His tone said: We don’t have to speak about it, but let’s not pretend we don’t know what I’m saying.
Speaking abstractly was the only way to speak the truth to him.
“Fear not. It will come. At least I hope it does. And when you least expect it. Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot. Just remember: I am here. Right now you may not want to feel anything. Perhaps you never wished to feel anything. And perhaps it’s not with me that you’ll want to speak about these things. But feel something you did.”
“I looked at him. This was the moment when I should lie and tell him he was totally off course. I was about to.
“Look,” he interrupted. “You had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, or pray that their sons land on their feet soon enough. But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!”
I couldn’t begin to take all this in. I was dumbstruck.
“Have I spoken out of turn?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Then let me say one more thing. It will clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most of us can’t help but live as though we’ve got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there’s only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there’s sorrow. I don’t envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.”
He took a breath.
“We may never speak about this again. But I hope you’ll never hold it against me that we did. I will have been a terrible father if, one day, you’d want to speak to me and felt that the door was shut or not sufficiently open.”
I wanted to ask him how he knew. But then how could he not have known? How could anyone not have known? “Does Mother know?” I asked. I was going to say suspect but corrected myself. “I don’t think she does.” His voice meant, But even if she did, I am sure her attitude would be no different than mine.
We said good night. On my way upstairs I vowed to ask him about his life. We’d all heard about his women when he was young, but I’d never even had an inkling of anything else.
Was my father someone else? And if he was someone else, who was I?
Professor PERLMAN is sitting in his usual place, but his chair is turned out to face the garden. On his lap are proofs of his latest book. He is drinking. Three large citronella candles next to him keep the mosquitoes away. ELIO comes into the room to say good night. His father puts away his manuscript with a toss and lights a cigarette - his last of the day - using one of the citronella candles.
PERLMAN: So? Welcome home. Did Oliver enjoy the trip?
ELIO: I think he did.
PERLMAN takes a drag from his cigarette, then pauses a moment before speaking.
PERLMAN: You two had a nice friendship.
ELIO: (somewhat evasive) Yes.
Another pause, and another drag on his cigarette.
PERLMAN: You’re too smart not to know how rare, how special, what you two had was.
ELIO: Oliver was Oliver.
PERLMAN: Parce-que c’etait lui, parce-que c’etait moi.
ELIO: (trying to avoid talking about Oliver with his father) Oliver may be very intelligent -
PERLMAN: (interrupting his son) Intelligent? He was more than intelligent. What you two had had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. He was good, and you were both lucky to have found each other, because you too are good.
ELIO: I think he was better than me.
PERLMAN: I’m sure he’d say the same thing about you, which flatters the two of you.
In tapping his cigarette and leaning toward the ashtray, he reaches out and touches Elio’s hand. PERLMAN alters his tone of voice (his tone says: We don’t have to speak about it, but let’s not pretend we don’t know what I’m saying).
PERLMAN: When you least expect it, Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot. Just remember: I am here. Right now you may not want to feel anything. Perhaps you never wished to feel anything. And perhaps it’s not to me that you’ll want to speak about these things. But feel something you obviously did.
ELIO looks at his father, then drops his eyes to the floor.
PERLMAN: Look - you had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, to pray that their sons land on their feet. But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is pain, nurse it. And if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out. Don’t be brutal with it. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!
ELIO is dumbstruck as he tries to take all this in.
PERLMAN: Have I spoken out of turn?
ELIO shakes his head.
PERLMAN: Then let me say one more thing. It will clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you two had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. Remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. And before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there’s sorrow. Pain. Don’t kill it and with it the joy you’ve felt.
PERLMAN takes a breath.
PERLMAN: We may never speak about this again. But I hope you’ll never hold it against me that we did. I will have been a terrible father if, one day, you’d want to speak to me and felt that the door was shut, or not sufficiently open.
ELIO: Does mother know?
PERLMAN: I don’t think she does. (but his voice means “Even if she did, I am sure her attitude would be no different than mine”)
INT. KITCHEN/STAIRCASE/BOCCHIRALE - PERLMAN VILLA - AFTERNOON 143
“Elio, Elio, Elio, Elio, Elio”
"Oliver.. I remember everything."
ELIO walks through the kitchen and up the stairs. The telephone rings and ELIO runs down the stairs to answer it, an expression of excited expectancy on his face. It is OLIVER, calling from New York.
OLIVER: (V.O.) Elio? Are you there?
ELIO: I’m here, I’m here. How are you?
OLIVER: (V.O.) Fine. How are your parents?
ELIO: Fine, too... I miss you.
OLIVER: (V.O.) I miss you too. Very much. (long beat) I have some news.
ELIO: What news? You’re getting married, I suppose. (laughing)
OLIVER: (V.O.)I might be getting married this spring.
ELIO: (dumbfounded) You never said anything.
OLIVER: (V.O.) It’s been off and on for two years.
ELIO: But that’s wonderful news!
OLIVER: (V.O.) Do you mind? ELIO You’re being silly.
There is a long silence. ELIO’s genuine congratulatory smile fades.
Just then ANNELLA appears, and ELIO hands it to his mother.
ANNELLA: Why aren’t you here? When are you coming? Elio misses you terribly, going around all the time with such a long face!
She and PERLMAN exchange greetings with OLIVER.
PERLMAN: You caught us while in the process of choosing the new you for next summer..
“Wonderful, wonderful!” they say. When they go out, PERLMAN hands the receiver back to ELIO, who reaches for it before they can hang up.
ELIO: (lowering his voice when he is sure they’ve left the room) They know about us...
OLIVER: (V.O.) I figured.
ELIO: How?
OLIVER: (V.O.) From the way your father spoke - he made me feel like a member of the family - almost like a son-in-law. You’re lucky. My father would have carted me off to a correctional facility.
ELIO: (daringly) Elio, Elio.
OLIVER: (V.O.) (After a very long beat) Oliver.. I remember everything ...
계속 추가해야지 ㅎㅎ