A subtle, sordid affair goes off the deep end in the rewardingly paradoxical Queer

Luca Guadagnino has made a celebrated filmography with titles that veer between the seductive and the surreal, ranging from more overtly romantic works like I Am Love, Call My By Your Name, and this year’s well-served Challengers to more shocking fare like the cannibalistic charms of Bones And All and his wild remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria. His latest, Queer—an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ complex story of addiction, affection, and experimentation entwined with details from the author’s own journey—blends these two modes together in an experimentally challenging yet rewarding film.

Split into three chapters with an epilogue, Queer centers on William Lee (Daniel Craig), who trolls the bars of a small Mexican town, seeking solace in the odd handjob while trying to make a more robust connection. When he spots Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a young, well-dressed man that takes to playing chess at a nearby table, Lee tries his best to be charming and aloof, only to come across as slightly desperate and gangly. Naturally, it all works out, and the two are soon off on an adventure, not only to Lee’s bedroom, but around various places in South America on a quest for new experiences.

What starts as a quiet, deliciously sordid affair takes a turn at first pathetic, with Lee trying to score a fix while fighting through detox, and then psychedelic, where a journey into the jungle provides more than simply another travel adventure—instead something far more challenging to Lee’s very being.

Burroughs’ novel itself had a difficult birth, originally tied to the release of his groundbreaking 1953 work Junkie, but held off on publication until the mid-1980s. It wasn’t simply because mid-century censors would surely have marked it as obscene, but that the author himself felt it too traumatic to complete at the time.

What sets Burroughs’ life apart, and thus his protagonist Lee’s as well, is the uncomfortable way that he approached all that was connoted back then with the term “queer,” refusing to be pigeonholed into expectations of both mainstream society and the gay subculture of the time. The word’s more acidic usage has been softened by reappropriation, but Burroughs is using it with all its offense implied, along with more than a dash of self-loathing. The iconoclastic author was as non-conforming with his own affectations and behaviors (from his obsessions with the occult to his killing of his second wife and zealous personal philosophy eschewing all moral and physical restrictions), and the resulting mix of incertitude, awkwardness, arrogance and loathing are all peppered in the otherwise charming, almost childlike craving for affection that Lee conveys.

This leads to a dense text, despite the austere setting, with subtle character beats buttressed right against more boisterous elements (such as their extravagances in the jungle), and quiet moments conveyed even as cacophony takes center stage. It’s here that Craig’s gifts shine, bringing a paradoxically undeniable charisma to his believably off-putting nature; we can actually understand why someone would refuse the offer to go to his bed. It’s an attractive unattractiveness, a collision that’s impossible, except that in this performance we believe every moment.

At the same time, in Starkey’s hands, the aloof, almost superficially seductive Eugene manages in brief glances or subtle squintings of the eyes to recognize that there’s far more going on behind that pretty face. It’s a character we’re never set to fully understand, matching the way Lee (and the author) was never truly able to connect unabashedly, save for certain transcendental moments where the connection was celestial in its magnitude. This is yet another contradiction mined to great effect, and the recognition by author and actor alike that the impossibility to truly get to know this person is one of the reasons that things go the way they do.

Other performers are equally excellent, especially Jason Schwartzman. He brings much needed laughs to the fore, a sardonic sad sack who makes mistake after mistake for all the right reasons. It’s both a lovely and pathetic role, and we revel when he finally finds what he’s looking for. 

The first two chapters are generally coherent (the screenplay by Challengers’ Justin Kuritzkes), even when the withdrawal takes hold and Lee is a shivering, hallucinating mess. Yet even before the final chapter, there are moments of almost subliminal surrealism, some superimpositions and momentary pauses that allude to inner thoughts, or future journeys. By the time things go fully bonkers with the kind of visual excess not shown in Guadagnino’s work since Suspiria, the conjoined debauchery is realized in a fashion that’s unnerving and inviting at the same time, yet another paradox the film toys with. 

While there are moments that resemble other films—Kubrick’s 2001 comes to mind, strangely enough—but what’s gratifying about Queer is that despite its 135-minute runtime, it never feels bloated or weird for the sake of being weird. It’s a film that’s deliberately told, but in each scene there’s added texture, so that when sitting at a club, going to a house party, or even sitting on the plane, the setting, the costumes, and the sweat dripping from the brows all draw you into the realism of the world. Perfect, then, when things go awry to feel as discombobulated as those characters we’re following on screen.

Where Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch found William Lee in the dark chaos of Burroughs’ bleak imagination, focusing on his inner demons in far more overt ways, Queer is a far more linear take despite its wild final flourishes. In some ways this makes for a more difficult time in immediately engaging with the film, and for some it will be an exercise in acting prowess and production design and little else. In contrast, many should be able to find the film’s subtleties more inviting than the maximalism of Naked Lunch, favoring the quiet tale over the more delirious one.

Throughout Burroughs’ works we’re treated to narratives inextricably tied to the author, consistently bouncing between the recognition of reality, and the ways in which his addictive personality and the caliber of his prose lead us in contradictory directions. Queer is a fine addition to this filmography, a confident work by Guadagnino that takes us along on Lee’s journey, both physical and metaphysical, and finds love, loss, pain, and progress along the way.

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Writer: Justin Kuritzkes
Starring: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, Henry Zaga
Release Date: September 3, 2024 (Venice)