I shall explain, but know that it’s slightly different in the book than the movie. The difference being that Oliver actually does eat the peach with Elio’s come in it.
Early on, Elio equates the fruit to Oliver’s ass in his red swimming trunks because of a scene when Oliver was picking fruit from their orchard and Elio thinks about wanting to bite into him.
Later, in The Peach Scene, we’re at the point where Elio has had sex with both Marzia and Oliver. He says that the peach in that moment isn’t anyone in particular, or even a gender in particular. The peach splits open and metaphorically, he’s in both a man and a woman. Each side represents a gender. He says that he doesn’t care if Marzia or Oliver found him, he just wanted someone to find him now that he’s had this massive sexual awaking.
That evening, it’s Oliver who finds him and Elio is half awake/half asleep in bed. He reaches out for Oliver and pulls him in to bed which leads to Oliver giving him head. He asks what Elio did and in the book, Elio tells him. He’s not ashamed of the incident. The bashfulness comes down to the intimacy of Oliver wanting to eat it because Elio has sort of had a hate/love towards his own come. He keeps telling Oliver that he doesn’t have to do it when he goes to eat it because he doesn’t feel good enough for the action
From the book: “I watched him put the peach in his mouth and slowly begin to eat it, staring at me so intensely that I thought even lovemaking didn’t go so far…I could tell he was tasting it at that very instant. Something that was mine was in his mouth, more his than mine now. I don’t know what happened to me at that moment as I kept staring at him, but suddenly, I had a fierce urge to cry. And rather than fight it, as with orgasm, I simply let myself go, if only to show him something equally private about me as well. I reached for him and muffled my sobs against his shoulder. I was crying because no stranger had ever been so kind or gone so far for me….I was crying because I’d never known so much gratitude and there was no other way to show it.”
So, why is The Peach Scene the turning point? It’s the moment that Oliver took Elio into his body so that they would, in some way, become one. That’s what the whole “call me by your name” comes down to. It’s finding a home in someone else who essentially becomes just as much you as you are yourself.
It’s a lot more than just a cock in a fruit hahah
❤
abbys_little_whippersnapper 