Tuesday, June 7, 2016

High-Brow Smut

I read that a movie version of the book Call Me By Your Name (CMBYN) by Andre Achiman is being made starring my favorite blond at the moment, Armie Hammer. I was surprised to read that someone not only had optioned the book for film but that an acutal movie (and apparently not a small-budget movie either) is being made. I read CMBYN some years ago and remembered that it was dirty. I recall having a discussion with a woman in my Philadelphia book club about the book because she'd read it for her Washington, DC book club. (She used to live in Philly, but moved to DC, but returned to Philly often to see friends and attend our book club meetings.) Anyway, I was shocked when she told me she'd read CMBYN for a book club because it's so smutty. I'm currently rereading it because I couldn't really remember much about it except that it was smutty. In my second reading, I'm still finding it smutty, but it's high-brow smut. There's a lot of talk of Greeks and religion and Haydn, but underneath all of that high-brow talk is a lot of sexual angst and sex itself. I have to say, reading the book a second time makes me more inclined to see the movie (and not just because of Armie Hammer--hey, I passed on The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). I mainly want to see the movie to find out how much they cut out (or leave in) from the book. The book centers on a 17-year-old boy who's in lust with a 28-year-old house guest who's staying with his family at their Italian villa for the summer. Are we really going to see Armie getting it on with a 17-year-old? Yeah, I doubt it. I have a feeling it'll turn into a series of scenes with the teen staring at Armie in lust and then being filled with angst because he can't (or won't) express his feelings or, when he does, he's rebuffed. The film is scheduled for a 2017 release, so if it finishes and sees the light of day, I'll certainly check it out.

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