“Why are you telling me these things?”

“Because I thought you should know... Because I wanted you to know.”

To me, this is the most important exchange in a film filled to the brim with perfect dialogue. Call Me By Your Name functions not only as one of the great love stories of our time, but as a dissection of words: what we say, what we mean, what we cannot say. Every breath tells a lifetime of stories; every touch, a millennia. Elio cannot express his emotions through words, so he believes that his emotions are wrong. The moment above, when he finally realizes that he doesn’t need to speak in order to say what he feels, is one of the most breathtaking, thrilling, and cathartic moments in modern cinema.

“Better to speak, she said.”

And so, in his own way, he does.