Why does cmbyn (call me by your name) resonate so deeply with young hearts, yearning and nostalgia

aside from the age gap, blinded by love, I talk about why does it hit so deep, a sense of longing for something that does not exists

There is a particular kind of silence that follows a film like call me by your name, not the silence of emptiness, but of something far more intimate; an ache, and lingering, that nestles quietly in the chest long after the screen fades to black. It’s not grief in its purest form, nor is it the residue of fleeting joy.

For many teenagers and young adults, this cinematic experience evokes a peculiar longing for a life never lived, for a love never touched, for a moment suspended outside the parameters of current time. The feeling is difficult to understand or to grasp. But it’s real.

Call me by your name is more than just a story of first love. It is an ode to sensual awakening, and the vulnerability of youth in its most crystalline form. Elio and Oliver’s summer romance in the northern Italian countryside is a masterclass in tension and intimacy, lush with yearning, swollen with silence, and rendered timeless by the golden haze of memory, the softness and contrast between two characters in the movie portrayed.

Elio and his father, that iconic scene and conversation from call me by your name

Watching Elio fall into, and then out of, a love that transcends definition, many viewers find themselves mourning not what they’ve lost, but what they’ve never had. This is not nostalgia in the conventional sense. It is more deep, melancholic, yearning for something undefined, something distant perhaps unreachable, and yet intimately familiar. It is the existential echo of Plato’s theory of forms:

The idea that we carry within us a memory of some purer, more perfect existence, and spend our lives trying to return to it through art, music, and intimacy.

Call me by your name does not offer us the thing itself, but it stirs the longing for it. This longing is further portrayed by the film’s dreamlike aesthetic. It has crafted a world of sensual indulgence; ripe peaches, sunlit villas, bicycles on cobblestone streets, Bach played on piano under open windows. It is a universe far from modernity, untouched by smartphones or social media, where time slows and each glance, each brush of the hand, carries unspeakable weight.

Call me by your name becomes less a place and more a state of mind: a sanctuary for feelings too large to fit into real life.

For those still navigating the fault lines of identity, Call me by your name offers a mirror both clarity and fog. It reflects a love that is tender, unspoken, and steeped in hesitation; a reality familiar to many who have had to tuck their desires into quiet corners. The film becomes a vessel for unspoken grief, for the invisible losses that accumulate when love must be hidden or denied. This is a form of ambiguous grief or anticipatory mourning: not the loss of something that was, but the loss of what could have been, had the world been softer.

But perhaps the most devastating note the film strikes is its meditation on time.

The seasons change. Oliver leaves. Life continues. And Elio, alone, stares into the fire as Sufjan Stevens sings us into the credits. In that final scene, time itself becomes a character; merciless and divine. It is here that the film confronts the viewer with one of life’s most universal truths: nothing lasts. All things, especially the beautiful ones, are transient.

For queer viewers, this ache is often doubled. The film becomes not only a reflection of desire, but also a quiet mourning for the love that had to be hidden, the moments that had to be suppressed, or the possibilities that had to be abandoned. It grants queer love the poetry it has so often been denied.

This confrontation with impermanence resonates acutely with young audiences, many of whom are encountering the concept of mortality; not just physical, but emotional, for the first time. As philosopher Martin Heidegger proposed, human existence is defined by an awareness of its own finitude. We are temporal creatures, always moving toward our end, always shaped by the knowledge that everything, even love, is ephemeral.

And so, when young viewers say the film made them feel like they’re “missing something,” they’re not imagining it. They are, in a very real way, encountering the architecture of longing: a structure built from emotional memory, imagined futures, and the fragile scaffolding of desire. They are grieving a love they haven’t had, a place they’ve never been, a version of themselves that feels just out of reach.

Call Me By Your Name doesn’t give us the answer to this longing. It doesn’t try to solve it. Instead, it gives the feeling form, a soundtrack, a setting, a pair of lovers suspended in sun. It whispers the question instead of declaring the truth. And in doing so, it becomes a deeply intimate companion to anyone who’s ever ached for more; more time, more meaning, more beauty, more love.

Because sometimes, the most human thing we can feel… is the ache for something we cannot name.