DID WE REALLY NEED A REMAKE OF "PREDATOR"?:

Most informed and honest people are familiar with the statistics about fatherless boys--how young men who grow up in homes without fathers are twice as likely to end up in jail as those who come from traditional two-parent families; how they have a higher risk of suicide and behavioral disorders; and how they are much more likely to drop out of school. Yet while these figures are striking and bolster the conservative argument that fathers are indispensable, there is also something to be said for the liberal case that it takes a village to raise a child. There once was a time when young men from bad homes could find male mentors in churches, the military, or even just fixing cars around the neighborhood.

One of the things that touched me so deeply about Call Me By Your Name is that the mise-en-scène was so similar to my own experience of adolescence. In the film it is the summer of 1983, and Elio Perlman is spending it with his family at their seventeenth-century villa in Lombardy, Italy. He meets Oliver, a handsome doctoral student who's working as an intern for Elio's father, a professor of classic archeology. The two characters are surrounded by lush beauty: the sun-drenched town square, the cool sensuality of a pool, a villa filled with intoxicating ideas and art. They fall in love.

While we are culturally in the middle of a 1980s revival that sees no sign of ending (see, for example, Stranger Things and the return of synth pop), Call Me By Your Name was far more evocative of the 1980s I remember when I was a high school student. My father was a writer for National Geographic, and my life, like Elio's, was suffused with art, writing, beauty and ideas. The conversations around the dinner table, especially when we were joined by a friend of my father's who was a scholar, were similar to the passionate dissertations given by Elio and his father, Mr. Perlman. Like Elio, I spent magical summers swimming, smoking and chasing girls.

Intelligent men like Oliver would often come into my life, either through my father or at places like tennis or football camp. But there was a crucial difference between these men and Oliver in Call Me By Your Name: None of these men came on to me sexually. The very idea would have been considered bizarre and evil--because they were men and I was still a boy.

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