Queer, directed by Luca Guadagnino, is a surreal homage to Beat writer William S. Burroughs, from its grunge rock and 80s pop soundtrack to the purposefully created backgrounds reminiscent of vintage Hollywood studio movies. The film, which is mostly based on Burroughs’ unfinished novel of the same name, stars Drew Starkey as the younger man who becomes the author’s fixation and Daniel Craig as the writer’s alter ego, a talkative, heroin-addicted exile living in 1950s Mexico City. Filled with allusions to the life and writings of the Junkie and Naked Lunch novelist, Queer depicts two guys who are looking for connection but are thwarted by their own repressive impulses and a society that considers their wants abnormal.
Craig told NBC News ahead of the film’s limited theater release on November 27 (its worldwide release is December 13) that Luca aptly described it as a narrative of unsynchronized love in a different time and place, not in this one.
That’s the film’s tragedy: At one point, you think, “This might be,” he said. And it’s not going to be.
In homage to frontman Kurt Cobain’s personal fondness for Burroughs, a writer renowned for his public aloofness and chilly, obscene wit, Queer begins with a Sin ad O Connor cover of Nirvana’s Come as You Are. The film was nearly entirely filmed on a studio at Cinecitt Studios in Rome. The movie then loosely follows the plot of the Beat novelist’s small book, which was written over a turbulent few years in Mexico City to evade drug charges before he allegedly shot and killed his wife while playing “William Tell.”
Similar to Burroughs’ main character, Craig’s gregarious but troubled William Lee prowls the streets and bars of the Mexican capital in search of his next drink and unfulfilling sex, until he meets Starkey’s enigmatic and brooding former soldier, Eugene Allerton. After years of drug-induced indifference, the elder expat develops a slavish devotion to the younger man, whose reserve only heightens his need.
Enticed by the prospect of mind reading, Lee begs Allerton to go with him to the jungles of Ecuador to find a hallucinogenic root that he believes will provide him telepathic abilities. However, the film, which was written by Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, culminates with a balletic sequence in which the men are entangled in passion while tripping on ayahuasca, in contrast to Burroughs’ novel, which finishes with the characters empty-handed.
Reiterating his earlier remarks regarding the characters’ eventually unsynchronized love, Craig stated, “It’s the moment in the movie where they get synchronized, and they become one.”
Allerton, who deserts Lee, finds the personal encounter that highlights Guadagnino’s portrayal of the men as star-crossed lovers rather than moths to a flame all too vivid. Shortly after, the movie delves into a sequence of surreal scenes that are inspired by other heartbreaking elements of Burroughs mythology, much as the protagonist’s disillusionment after being abandoned in the bush.
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