Call Me By Your Name is radical because it imagines utopian same-sex love

Would it not be ideal if two people - of whatever gender or sexual desire - could continue with their amorous interests without being fraught by social and existential crises?

The almost ubiquitous praise of Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name — nominated at the Oscars for a Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay — is slowly but surely being challenged by a growing body of opinion that questions the very queerness of the narrative. The film, adapted from André Aciman’s eponymous 2007 novel, might be the sort of onscreen romance all of us have been asking for a long time: It is a gorgeous representation of an almost improbable summer love between two impossibly beautiful men. But, its detractors claim it is hardly a “gay” film,