Call Me Bi Any Other Name: Anal Monstration, Formal Bisexualization, Gay Indigestion

For a number of gay critics, one of Call Me by Your Name's most troubling features was its purportedly explicit depiction of sex between men and women, and its alleged concealment of sex between men. For D. A. Miller among others, this phenomenon is symptomatic of a closeting of homosex and an appeal to the sensibilities of a heterosexual audience. These critics, however, miss the bisexual character of the film's engagement with Elio and Oliver's desires, which cannot be discerned by the monosexual hermeneutic to which they are wedded. We can also observe these critics' valuing of anal sex as queer sex par excellence, and their critical frustration around polysemous significations. I conclude that such approaches limit queer film studies' scope, and that attention to queer yet nongay cinematic spaces — like those of Call Me by Your Name — widen the scope of what queer film might be.