Give Me Your Clothes & I'll Give You Mine

.

Once you see the gay romance God's Own Country - which is out this weekend in NYC & LA and which you should very much see; here's my review from earlier today - you'll look at that attractive red sweater that GOC star Alec Secareanu is seen wearing there as more than just a lovely piece of knitwear draped over a lovely piece of man. The movie imbues it with a talismanic power - it comes to symbolize the intimacy between the two men. (There's a scene where it's the only piece of clothing that can be seen on-screen even though both actors are there, if you catch my wink wink. You won't miss it, believe me.)

Anyway there's also a similar trick played with an item of clothing in Call Me By Your Name - there's a blue shirt that Armie Hammer's Oliver gifts to Timothee Chalamet's Elio that bridges the gap between the two men when they're separated, and which, on all four times that I have watched CMBYN, has immediately (and I think on purpose) given me flashbacks to the now iconic final scene of Brokeback Mountain, with the layered shirts of Ennis & Jack forever hung beside the closet.

I suppose that there is something about this that is specific to queer relationships, this swapping of clothing - this slipping into your beloved's skin in this precise symbolic way - and I love the way these stories are echoing each other here. When I first reviewed CMBYN I told that story about the first guy I hooked up with and made mention of how he stole shirts from me, so clearly I relate.

Anyway it feels like we're developing our own cinematic language, one with its own history and weight, after not having had our stories told on-screen for so long. God's Own Country and Call Me By Your Name, while emotionally taxing at times, bear little of the imposed-from-the-outside tragedy that Brokeback did, but they both owe that film a cultural debt all the same. We can now get our love stories told our own ways, layered over one another like those shirts of Jack & Ennis. It just feels right somehow. It, dare I say, fits.
.