Queer
Luca Guadagnino’s audacious William Burrough’s adaptation is a tormented hazy love story of deep and divine isolation.
Based on Burrough’s short novel, Queer follows the aimless exploits of William Lee played in a career shifting role by Daniel Craig, who roams 40s Mexico City bouncing from bar-to-bar flirting with the other ‘queers’ looking for a quick hook up. Lee can’t stand to be alone and is desperate for company with others, and when a handsome young well-groomed man called Eugene played by Drew Starkey shows up, Lee is instantly smitten with him and becomes obsessed with trying to read Eugene’s blank and enigmatic face. As the two form an uncertain relationship, Lee becomes so desperate to get inside Eugene’s head, he proposes a trip down to South America to seek out a plant that is said to grant telepathic abilities.
Guadagnino’s direction in Queer is peculiar, unpredictable, classy and surreal, unlike anything he has accomplished so far, which feels fitting for a Burrough’s text, yet its multifaceted approach leaves much to be desired in a film about desire and longing for something more. We spend the first half meandering with Lee having purposeless conversations with different gentlemen in bars, with a few explicit sexual encounters which sets a dull pace, before setting off into much more adventurous psychedelic territory when it finally shifts into gear. When more substances are taken by the character the trip is much stranger but the more interesting, with one breath-taking sequence when Guadagnino utilises his sultry lens for fleshly bodies that begin melting into each other. Queer’s design harks back to a classic Hollywood technicolour melodrama of things like All That Heaven Allows (1955), with bold bursts of saturated colour, with the creeping dream space of David Lynch. The needle drops are obtrusive and out of time adding to a subconscious realm where space and time have no real presence. Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor’s score is melancholic waves of lonely brass and twinkling fairy tale strings.
Daniel Craig throws himself into this charismatic dazed alcoholic hopeless romantic longing for companionship with conviction but also deep loneliness. Every scene Lee is with other people, he has a selfish cheeriness with him, but once he is alone deep depression overtakes him. Lee is constantly reaching his hand out to another, even in embrace, Lee craves for something bigger than what is right in front of him. Craig beautifully captures an earnest stillness and isolation in these moments but equally reinhabits a Benoit Blanc type confidence in the bar scene. It is a fitting performance that is resonate of an earlier entry in Craig’s career, another romantically torched gay artist movie: Love is the Devil, Study for Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998). Queer similarly uses Bacon esc body imagery in some of its most enchanting and intoxicating scenes. Lee is constantly reaching out to touch Eugene, sometimes only imagined.
Eugene is the enigma of Lee's obsession a slim well-groomed young man with suggestive winks and grins, who could well be a mirror image of a younger Lee himself. Starkey’s presence is mysterious but controlled, with a perfect physic that the camera enjoys leering at. Whether or not Eugene reciprocates Lee’s feelings is what is eating him up inside. Some of the most outrageous cameos come from unrecognisable comedic turns from Jason Schwartzman and an even more distorted appearance from Lesley Manville. Like Mark Rylance stealing the show in Bones and All, Manville takes over the film as the creepy botanist in the South American jungle who wields a shotgun and has snake for a bodyguard.
With Challengers screenwriter Justine Kuritzkes, Queer boldly steps into uncharted territory of Burroughs incomplete story but manages to be a beautiful and mournful encapsulation of alienation and the longing for ample touch.
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