Utterly predictable and unconvincing

Rating: 4/10 (12 May 2018)

I had heard absolutely nothing about this movie, but downloaded it (legally of course) and watched it only because it was on the list of Best Picture nominees.
The first one hour or so was utterly boring with nothing going on. An intellectual, multiglot family chills out in the summer at some villa in beautiful Italy. Some grad student Oliver comes to "work".
I could not see at all where this movie was going. Which meant, of course, that there was only one utterly predictable possibility - the 17-year-old son Elio was going to have some sort of love affair with the grad student.
But this possibility made no sense to me. There was no chemistry/romance between the two of them and not the slightest hint that either was attracted to more than just members of the opposite sex.
Then boom, midway in the movie, they suddenly start hooking up. You see it coming only because that's the only way the movie could possibly have gone (to have any hope of redemption), yet it was utterly unconvincing. They then spend the rest of the movie frolicking and having more unconvincing hook-ups.
I will admit that Elio's performance was pretty good and thus worthy of a Oscar nomination (but certainly nowhere near as good as Gary Oldman's Churchill).
But Oliver's performance was especially unconvincing and wooden. It was possible that Oliver was engaging in a manipulative, one-sided fling with a kid, but completely unbelievable that he was madly in love with Elio, as we were made to believe towards the end of the movie with the "epic" father spiel and the phone call.