Find Me

Miranda, the beautiful young woman Samuel meets by chance, is impulsive, flighty, passionate, and curious. Her intellectual stamina heightens her beauty for Samuel. Her very name is purported to originate in Shakespeare’s Tempest and has come to signify being worthy of admiration. Her career, as a globe-trotting photographer, emphasizes her fear of being tied down, and she herself acknowledges that relationships are difficult because she quickly grows bored of men. Her own father underscores this, warning Samuel of her impulsivity and inability to stay put.

Despite these red flags, it is implied that Miranda inhabits a fuller version of herself in her relationship with Samuel. Miranda moves in with Samuel, has a child with him, and stays with him until his death. Miranda inspires Samuel to live a radically different type of love, one that is fast-paced and important. She symbolizes the adventure of youth but also proves that love has no age.

Elio Perlman is the narrator of Part 2, “Cadenza,” and Part 4, “Da Capo.” He is an artist whose identity as a pianist is integral to his life. Elio has achieved his dream of living an artist’s life, which includes exploring the world and meeting new people. In Part 2, Elio is paralleled to Miranda in that they both share a certain flightiness in love. Elio has had long-term relationships before, but he often is unfulfilled by his romantic partners. When he is in a serious relationship, he eventually craves his independence and autonomy. Elio worries that love will take away this autonomy. This is partly because Elio’s first and most profound love, with Oliver, was a merging of autonomies, not a loss of one. Elio hasn’t stopped thinking about Oliver for years. He doesn’t communicate with Oliver because he finds it too painful, but he also knows that he doesn’t need a friendship with Oliver in order to know and understand him. When Elio meets Michel, he embraces heated passion and a depth of understanding, but his deep connection with Michel is not comparable to the one he still nurtures in his heart for Oliver.

Like his father, Elio is interested in the past. His investigation of Ariel Waldstein’s life and death is evidence that he looks to history to learn about the present. He is connected through time with Ariel through their shared passion for music; he is also the only person besides Ariel to play his cadenza. Ariel’s doomed love acts as a foil for the fated love Elio recaptures with Oliver. In Part 4, when Elio is reunited with Oliver and they decide to pursue the romance of their youth in their maturity, Elio is still tied to memory, but he learns to discover the new layers of Oliver more than 20 years after their first foray into love. Elio believes in true love and is unwilling to settle for a love that is less than the one he has for Oliver. Elio symbolizes the inherent beauty of the pursuit of love.

Michel is Elio’s lover in Part 2. He is an older Frenchman who has had to go through pain and loss to live his life authentically. He was married to a woman until she discovered his love for men, and his son holds his sexuality against him, symbolizing the generational difference in attitudes toward gay relationships. Michel’s age difference with Elio, whose youth and beauty he admires, is significant; there is an element of caretaking in their relationship. Michel chooses the restaurant, hosts their sexual encounters at his hotel, massages him, and hosts him at his country home, a sign of maturity that Elio is still far from achieving. Michel welcomes Elio into his intimate spaces, breaking down physical barriers and embracing his deep connection with Elio. His belief in fate comes into play as well: He believes it is fate that he met Elio, who not only loves him but helps him solve the mystery of Ariel Waldstein.

Michel’s maturity also gives him a certain detached wisdom; he knows that Elio is still madly in love with Oliver, which means that Elio and Michel’s relationship has an expiration date. Nonetheless, Michel lives for the moment and embraces Elio for everything that Elio can give him.