Take the Wild Boys scene above: What’s most revealing about it is the way Guadagnino’s still camera lingers on Fraser, letting the moment he turns from Burroughs’s cheeky images to a more vulnerable revelation (“I love you,” he tells Mark) play out unencumbered on Grazer’s face. Yet there’s no denying they share similar DNA, an ability to get us inside the heads of their teenage protagonists. But immediately, We Are Who We Are announces itself as something altogether less precious, more modern (and more NSFW even!) than that peachy film adaptation. Yes, there are thrilling music cues that may well remind you of Armie Hammer dancing and Timothée Chalamet swooning. Yes, it is also centered on the queer-teen experience.

This intimate moment, which happens near the ten-minute mark of Luca Guadagnino’s new HBO series We Are Who We Are (which he co-wrote with Paolo Giordano and Francesca Manieri), is a perfect way to begin talking about the Call Me by Your Name director’s latest endeavor.įirst things first, though: Yes, this is set in sun-dappled Italy.

Once you realize Fraser all but mumbles his way through the word “jockstrap” in the line above, you see why the image Burroughs conjured for the peroxide-blond-haired teen would no doubt set his hormonal imagination ablaze. The 1971 dystopian novel about an anarchist group of young homosexuals has its fair share of near-pornographic scenes. Burroughs’s The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead. When he puts the book down to send a voice message to his friend Mark about what he’s learned about the military base in Italy he now calls home, we’re given a good look at said book: William S. As soon as he does, though, he looks away, his eyes flitting back and forth, buzzing from what he’s just read. “He is naked except for a rainbow-colored …”įraser Wilson ( It’s Jack Dylan Grazer) doesn’t quite finish reading the sentence out loud to himself from the earmarked copy of the book he’s picked up.

We are who we are episode 8