Daniel Craig Is Horny, Sweaty, Witty and Brilliant in ‘Queer’
Luca Guadagnino does not have a personal Instagram account (that I can find: write in with intel, please) but you just know the man behind Call Me By Your Name would kill a summer carousel. During the opening credits of his latest film Queer, the Italian director spins through a series of objects on a sun-dappled bed spread: wire-framed spectacles, well-stamped passports, some pleasingly thumbed books and… guns. (What do you mean you didn’t take your pistol on your August trip to Comporta?) That is a good primer for this film, a desperate love story involving Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey, which lures you in with bright-as-candy landscapes and leads you somewhere altogether more treacherous.
We are in Mexico City, in the 1950s. Sexual liberation (specifically queer liberation) is in the air. It is a place where writer William S. Burroughs lived and let loose – Queer is adapted from the 1985 Burroughs novella of the same name – and Guadagnino brings the world to life in a rush of unreal colours, arresting interiors and endless skies. William Lee (Craig), an American expat, spends his evenings cruising local bars and, if an early scene with Omar Apollo is indicative of his hit rate, easily scoring pretty – and pretty lost – boys. Nice life, perhaps, but we soon learn he is a figure of mockery among some of his snipey cohort who view him as lecherous and a little pathetic. Is that treatment homophobic? Or is he actually a creep?
No matter: Lee soon struts down the evening streets, feeling himself to the anachronistic notes of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are”. Across from a cockfight – do you get it? Do you? I think you might! – he spots a preppy-looking guy with gelled hair and glasses. That boy is Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a discharged soldier looking for something (and someone?) to do. Together, they form an odd pair: Lee is sweat-drenched in creased linen, Allerton is lean and cool. They consummate their affair in a drawn-out sequence which Guadagnino stages with an eye to both humour and awkwardness. It’s one of this film’s stand-out scenes.
Unfortunately, Lee also has a crippling drug addiction, and after the love affair turns nasty, he is at even looser end than before. He asks Allerton to accompany him on a quest throughout South America to try to find yagé, a psychoactive substance which you may know as ayahuasca. In exchange for Lee paying for travel and lodging, Allerton simply has to sleep with Lee twice a week. What follows is a travelogue through small towns and beaches and jungles via bus and train and hazardous hikes.
Guadagnino’s world engulfs you. Many close-up shots of backs and necks and hands reaching towards them. The director likes a bodily fluid, and those abound in this film. The film is beautiful and sexy and the clothes look great (Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson is again on clothing duties following sweaty tennis flick Challengers). But there’s also a real tension in Lee and Allerton’s relationship, which is alternately depressing and compelling. Craig, channelling a whiff of his Southern Knives Out detective, really sells Lee’s desperation – for drugs, for boys, for Allerton – and Starkey brings a handsome aloofness to proceedings. The latter’s features become increasingly unreadable as former’s grow ever more anguished.
And the supporting cast is great: Jason Schwartzman is unrecognisable as Lee’s catty confidante while Lesley Manville goes all out as a botanist-cum-shaman. All ably supported by a sharp screenplay from Challengers writer Justin Kuritzkes (who also happens to be the partner of Past Lives writer-director Celine Song). Queer is a less easily understood film than Challengers, and with a much less straightforward romance than Call Me By Your Name, and that opacity only makes it more intriguing, especially when Guadagnino goes off piste and adds in details from Burroughs’ – how should I put this? – tumultuous personal life.
The film’s final chapters, when the odd couple are embedded in the rainforest, are particularly good: there’s a looseness to the narrative that fits well with the Lee’s mental disintegration. He has been worn out by drugs, travel and uncertainty: does Allerton like him? Does he hate him? Perhaps this trip will provide some answers. In one typically visceral sequence, both men vomit up their own hearts, though understanding is still elusive. As far as metaphors go, it is not so much in-your-face as down-your-throat, but speaks to Queer’s appeal: like the object of Lee’s affection, the film is striking and difficult to parse. You have to keep watching to see if you finally get it.
‘Queer’ is out in cinemas now
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