Writer: Justin Kuritzkes
Director: Luca Guadagnino
For most of Justin Kuritzkes adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ novella Queer, Daniel Craig’s character is a man in search of oblivion, desperate to lose himself in alcohol, hard drugs and, ultimately, the body of a young man with whom he becomes infatuated. Kuritzkes’ picture of a gay ex-pat community in Mexico living for the night, directed by Luca Guadagnino, revolves around a chance encounter with someone who might make it all bearable for a while. Increasingly inspired by MGM Technicolor movies and Hitchcock, Queer’s final Act, though true to the book, loses the gains the film has made so far.
Drunk, alone and marshalling up occasional strength for casual sex, writer William Lee spends days at The Ship Ahoy bar with friends before finding a partner for the night. But spotting the beautiful Eugene in the street leads to a passionate adoration which the young man occasionally indulges without ever confirming his sexuality or committing to Lee’s love. As Lee seeks hallucinogens that may give him telepathic powers, he hopes that his connection with Eugene will solidify.
Queer seems to be two films at once, and initially it is a restrained and tender portrait of obsession and the extremes of behaviour that only an unrequited and painful love can elicit. Watching Craig’s Lee deteriorate further into drunken despair is well charted by Kuritzkes and Guadagnino, as is the death wish detail that sits beneath Craig’s performance, revealed in small details like books on the table as he takes heroine, a man hoping his appointment with death is approaching.
Guadagnino too finds exquisite detail in the film’s staging, taking us further and further away from realism by subtle degrees, as the Mexico streets bathed in pink sunset look increasingly like a soundstage from the 1950s, all reflecting Lee’s increased detachment and plunge into hallucination and dreams. Guadagnino also creates great moments of Hitchcock tension echoing the angularity of shots from Noth by Northwest and Vertigo with a notably dove grey pallet which Hitchcock favoured in several of his films. The sensitivity beneath the art is also affecting, moving away from the often graphic depictions of sex in films about homosexuality, to create an emotional and deeply intimate connection between Lee and Eugene – here nodding to Tom Ford’s stylish A Single Man in giving dignity to his older character’s inner life.
But Queer then follows the men on a trip to find a telepathic drug and the film becomes another thing entirely, bigger and obviously sillier as they career through a rainforest like they are in King Kong and go on heady drug trips in a generic hut with Lesley Manville. This part of the film is also about connection but its staging and the performance are so much bigger that it feels like another story entirely, perhaps too faithful to Burroughs’ original.
Daniel Craig continues a fascinating run of form, reminding the world of his range with a troubled but gentle man seeking something to take him away from himself and finding despair in everything. Drew Starkey is imperious and aloof as Eugene, never giving Lee or the audience what he wants and remaining an enigma. Queer is such a great film for two of its chapters and then it’s just not and had Kuritzkes and Guadagnino stayed in Mexico City then this would have been beautiful.
Queer is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2024.
The Reviews Hub Score:
Partly beautiful
