Luca Guadagnino has his second sleazy and sweaty hit of the year with Queer

For a long time, I was a Luca Guadagnino skeptic. His early works struck me as sanitized bourgeois fantasies; Instagram-beautiful dramas that seemed in denial of salaciousness. Improbably, Bones and All turned things around. Suddenly, Guadagnino’s schtick felt messy and a little trashy. He leaned on his actors to be bolder, weirder, and traded an implied peach-fuck for a literal bloodbath. The easy ménage à trois sexiness of Challengers spoke to my love of cinema as an arena for pleasure, and now with Queer, a sleazy and sweaty adaptation of a William S. Burroughs novella, I’ve become a full convert.

Set in 1950s Mexico, much of the first act of Queer follows a glistening William Lee (Daniel Craig) in his pursuit of the clean-cut Eugene Alterton (Drew Starkey). Lee’s days are filled with drinking and cruising. He wanders through the streets, from one bar to another. The filmmaking is guided by his gaze, a look that feels heavy with drugs and lust. The whiplash between Lee’s initial desperation and the curdled density of his desire inspires a restless suspense. Even before the film has a clear narrative trajectory, the tension feels ripe and unpredictable. As Lee sizes up different men, wondering if they might also be queer, we feel the transgressive spark of his embittered longing that so often leads to rejection and solitude, and feels ever-tinted by the promise of casual violence.

As the film expands, with Lee and Alterton growing closer, its universe becomes heavier with Lee’s personal failings and obsessions. The world feels unstable and not quite real. Particularly in the film’s first act, the whole world has the quality of a set; an imagined version of a real place. It’s full of deception and beauty. While often set at night, the sun seems to relentlessly burn into Lee’s skin and eyes. He’s forever covered in sweat and grime. As the film progresses, we also understand that he’s ripped with addiction; his intense and parasitic sexual obsession with Eugene, but also a cocktail of drugs. His exile in Mexico increasingly feels like an opportunity to embrace a slow death, a self-annihilation that blurs the line between waking and dreaming, life and death.

Lee becomes obsessed with finding a mystery drug used by the Indigenous people and bribes Eugene to come with him into the depths of the jungle to find it. If Queer carried any romanticism, it dissipates as they undertake a journey across Mexico marked by drug withdrawals and petty sexual favours. Lee can’t seem to help but accelerate not only the demise of his relationship but also himself, as his decisions drive everything and everyone away from him. If he seemed sullen and desperate at first glance, he suddenly seems monstrous and pitiful, not unlike the sun-shy cockroaches scurrying in corners of their hotel rooms. 

While the film lacks the paranoia of another Burroughs adaptation, Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, it nonetheless draws the viewer into the fragmented perspective of our self-loathing protagonist. The film’s structure, increasingly uncertain, does err towards being too long, but rarely loses its momentum. Part of this is due to Craig’s reptilian performance, which undercuts his charm to such an extent that he manages to make Lee feel like an unwelcome visitor on our screen. His natural charisma keeps us watching, though, as we learn to yearn, as he does, for brief respites of sensuality. 

Guadagnino keeps the material within the realm of palatable for a mainstream audience, but he doesn’t shy away from the salaciousness of the material. The film has a grand sense of scale, splicing in just enough euphoric beauty to keep us hooked into Lee’s desperate quest. But these brief moments of grace are misaligned with Lee’s desires. The lessons learned don’t drive him towards fulfilment or actualization, but further into his delusions. He’s a frustrated and frustrating character who refuses the call to change or grow, caught in a self-imposed exile of otherness and alienation.

Watching Queer feels like entering a state of mild delirium. It’s a movie that begins quite conventionally and descends deeper into a mild hallucination. While the film remains quite firmly within the realm of convention, not risking too much in terms of audience retention, it also remains fairly loyal to Burroughs’ tone and obsessions. In a year that might seem lacking, Queer does stand out as one of 2024’s most exciting films. ■

Queer is now playing in Montreal theatres.

---

For our latest in film and TV, please visit the Film & TV section.