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It wasn’t too long ago that queer people couldn’t walk away from a love story without seeing themselves die first. Killing off queer characters was apparently the only way to get straight audiences to understand the magnitude of their love. After films like Brokeback Mountain, television shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and too many other examples to list popularized—and became derided for—this phenomenon, it became known as the “Bury Your Gays” trope.
In recent years, Hollywood has made the bold decision to occasionally let queer characters live at the end of the story. Imagine that! The hole left by queer death has now been filled by queer longing, a much more realistic—if equally heartbreaking—storytelling device.
The stifled, torturesome desire of an unspeakable love that goes against the grain of society is what made Timothée Chalamet put a pair of his crush’s swim trunks over his head. It’s what brought Harry Styles drunkenly to the stoop of his lover’s London flat. And it’s what makes the two days depicted in Of an Age feel like two lifetimes’ worth of yearning.