An older man grooms a teenager...

Rating: 1/10 (30 March 2019)

Chalamet is over sexualized by the filmmakers. Going around half nude in short shorts, it's very twink-fantasy. It's a bit much of the male on male gaze. As well. Reverse the genders of an older man grooming a teenage girl and you have a scandal and disgrace. The gay community has not yet had this kind of reckoning on ages and boundaries, and so the film could very well overnight become appalling or shameful some day. Basically, there's a lot to say about it in a cynical way, such as, why is the father not only enabling a predatory relationship against his 17 yr old son, but intentionally leading him to it...? Then it's slyly his own unfulfilled male fantasies. A twisted projection. The end convo was apparently famous from the book but I always reject 'lessons learned' scripting. The closing shot was powerful enough without it. I way prefer the understatement, ala the ending phone call, the boy is so in over his head there's no big moment, just repeating the name. This sort of authenticity sells it. So I see both sides. How special and classic it feels, being the iconic fusion of the hotshot auteur plus 89-year old James Ivory scripting; I can concede and say such relationships do happen so why shouldn't they be on film? But in this era, to never attempt to address the predatory grooming seems dangerous and wrong.