Producers: Lorenzo Mieli and Luca Guadagnino Director: Luca Guadagnino Screenplay: Justin Kuritzkes Cast: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville, Henrique Zaga, Omar Apollo, Andra Ursata, Andrés Duprat, Ariel Shulman, Drew Droege, Michael Borrëmans, David Lowery, Lisandro Alonso and Colin Bates Distributor: A24
Grade: B
Luca Guadagnino began the year with his most overtly crowd-pleasing film, the rousing tennis-themed sex romp “Challengers.” Now he and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes return with one just as beautifully crafted but much less accessible, an adaptation of William S. Burroughs semi-autobiographical novella, written in the early fifties but published only in 1985. It’s not inaccessible in terms of its basic narrative, which, despite some hallucinatory sequences is a fairly straightforward tale of a man desperately searching for love and connection, but in tone and affect, which are uncommonly bleak.
For many the major selling point for “Queer”—probably the sole one in some cases—will be the presence of Daniel Craig, moving as far from his now-signature run as hyper-masculine James Bond as one could imagine. He plays Burroughs’ fictional alter-ego William Lee, an American who’s fled to Mexico City, where he lives a life of endless bar-hopping and cruising for male sex partners. Craig’s performance is an extraordinary piece of work, not merely because it shatters the Bond image most viewers will still have of him despite his very different work in the “Knives Out” series, but because it’s brilliant and bracing in its own right. In his hands Lee, dressed in a white linen suit, tossing back shot after shot and filling ashtray after ashtray, exudes sweaty loneliness and despair even as he tries to appear upbeat, witty and seductive.
An alcoholic drug addict who spends time with other gay men like jovially self-deprecating Joe Guidry (an almost unrecognizably burly, and delightfully louche, Jason Schwartzman) and ostentatiously swishy John Dumé (Drew Droege), Lee becomes obsessed at first sight with lankily handsome veteran Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), who initially reacts coyly to his obvious attention, spending much of his time with a woman (Andra Ursata) as Lee looks on. But Lee is persistent, and eventually they connect and have sex; the relationship is strained, however, because of Lee’s possessiveness and Allerton’s ambivalence.
So to maintain their bond Lee proposes to pay for a trip to Ecuador in search of yagé, a plant that purportedly can increase telepathic properties in those who use it. The offer doesn’t come without conditions, but Allerton accepts and they’re off. After dealing in Quito with the ravages of Lee’s addiction—there’s a fine recreation of Burroughs’ description of his consultation with a doctor (Michaël Borremans) there—Lee persuades a hesitant professor (Andrés Duprat) to provide him with the location of a botanist with knowledge of the plant.
Thus far Kuritzkes and Guadagnino have followed Burroughs’ text quite faithfully, even lifting a good deal of the dialogue from the novella, though they make room for embellishments, like the torrent of squeals that Craig adds to Lee’s description of an imagined dessert of a live pig covered with burning alcohol, and a few dreamlike interpolations. But with the film’s third “chapter” they invent a new conclusion as the two men journey into the deep jungle, where they encounter the outrageously domineering Dr. Cotter (Lesley Manville, obviously relishing the chance to go over-the-top) who, with her partner (Lisandro Alonso), has established a relationship with the locals and is expert in preparation of ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic porridge made from yagé.
Lee and Allerton indulge in the brew and have a remarkable experience. But it does not keep them together, even though they merge phantasmagorically during it—a fulfillment of the dreamlike union Lee had conjured up earlier in a protoplasmic projection, in Burroughs’ phrasing, as they watched Cocteau’s “Orpheus” back in Mexico City. (The special effect employed here is haunting.) A coda set years later reunites the aged Lee with Allerton, at least in the old man’s mind; the meeting, however, ends in an act that mirrors Burrough’s drunken, and likely accidental, killing of his common-law wife Joan Vollmer in September, 1951.
This “new” final section of the adaptation, along with the allusive epilogue, aren’t appreciably more artificial than the earlier ones in tone (the dialogue very literary) and appearance (though some scenes were shot in Quito and Mexico City, the bulk of the picture was done on sound studios in Rome—kudos to production designer Stefano Baisi and costumer Jonathan Anderson), but it does seem devised to be more showy, a means for Guadagnino to put a personal stamp on the film.
Still, Craig and Manville go to such rabid lengths to make it work that one’s willing to put up with its insistence on being wild and voluptuous, with the long merge sequence being particularly eye-catching. It’s also here that Starkey, who’s been quite restrained in line with Allerton’s ambiguous response to Lee, finally lets loose to a degree. Fortunately, Schwartzman reappears to add a dose of geniality to what’s become awfully somber. The rest of the cast have only modest screen time, but there are sharp cameos from Omar Apollo as a one-night stand Lee has in Mexico City before focusing on Starkey, and filmmaker David Lowery as another of his conquests who sheepishly goes back to his wife in America.
The elegant otherworldliness of the film is accentuated by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s lustrous cinematography, the moody score by “Challengers” composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (embellished with some blatantly anachronistic needle drops), an evocative sound design by Craig Berkey and Alessandro Bonfanti, and the unhurried pacing of Guadagnino and editor Marco Costa. The special effects are genuinely creepy, down to the final sequence that might remind you a bit of the close of “2001.”
In the end “Queer” is as much Guadagnino as Burroughs, an adaptation that reflects the director’s gaudy vision as much as the author’s confessional. But with Craig an all-important third element, it proves an intriguing, challenging combination.