QUEER (Italy, USA | 2024 | 135m | Luca Guadagnino)
Thought if anyone could make the smack-addled writings of William S Burroughs romantic it would have to be Luca Guadagnino, but alas. Although he’s among the foremost channelers of the passions that drive men mad, I somehow remain too square and thus immune to the heady allure of psychedelic travelogues.
So, the failure of appreciation might be mine. It’s certainly not for lack of effort from Daniel Craig. As “Lee” the Burroughs stand-in, he strives mightily and gives a sweaty, disheveled, and very horny performance right from the sweltering opening shot that finds him cruising amid boisterous street life. With lensing by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (a frequent collaborator who first worked with Guadagnino on Call Me By Your Name and continues through Challengers) they recreate a magical expat enclave in 1940s Mexico City entirely on an Italian soundstage where everyone’s wearing clothing designed by Jonathan Anderson of Loewe. With a feel of hazy memory, hot days, and sweltering nights, the film finds Lee spends the day trading stories and running up tabs with fellow writer (a delightfully inept, amiable, overstuffed Jason Schwartzman) in their favorite bar, one frequented by mixed company (vs. the gay hideouts elsewhere in the city.
Soon enough, he’s taken with a tall, slim, Navy serviceman of ambiguous sexuality (Drew Starkey as Eugene Allerton) and follows his crush around the city like a puppy dog, albeit one in a sixty-something year old man’s body. Whether the infatuation is mutual barely matters, the more time they spend together, the harder Lee pines, the more Eugene indulges. When they finally, deeply drunkenly, consummate the flirtation there’s some degree of acquiescence but Guadagnino isn’t coy about the specifics of how thoroughly they each enjoy themselves in the bedroom.
As Eugene distances himself with a level of youthful nonchalance or the sexual fluidity of a strikingly handsome sailor, Lee becomes more deeply infatuated. The screenplay from Justin Kuritzkes doesn’t exactly rival the scintillating tensions of this year’s previous collaboration (Challengers), but it does share that film’s fascination with the push and pull of attraction, unknowability, and a certain kind of ambition. Here, the maddening inability to know what’s going on in his pretty boy’s head drives Lee’s obsession with mind reading and experiencing the transformative powers of a fabled jungle plant called yagé (a.k.a. psychedelic ayahuasca tea). Whether he’s curious about the drug, hungry for a change of scenery on someone else’s dime, or actually attracted to Lee, Eugene agrees to join an expedition into the jungles of South American on a quest for the ultimate trip.
It’s a vacation that finds them frolicking romantically on a beach, swimming blissfully with each other in the ocean, negotiating the terms of intimacy, and coming to terms with the harsh realities of backpacking with a closet heroin addict. As they plunge deeper into the thick vegetation and further from civilization, the film loses itself in the humid possibilities of better living through plant medicines. They’ll machete their way to encounter with a feral Lesley Manville, an hilarious sloth, and a drug trip with shades of the body malleability that Guadagnino explored in Suspiria. Perhaps because it stretches beyond the frame of the long-unpublished short novel, the story feels thin and suffused with a mournful quality of the lingering ache of unrequited love under the influence.
Although the film doesn’t feel entirely successful, like almost everything Luca Guadagnino has done this film has plenty to recommend a look. The soundtrack is another Reznor and Ross marvel that’s peppered with delicious Nirvana needle drops. And as far as slippery muses go, Drew Starkey is one hell of a drug.
Queer had its North American Premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival