The TIFF Film Review: Luca Guadagnino’s Queer
By Ross
“All in all is all we all are,” sings Sinead O’Connor from her hypnotic “All Apologies” as we are brought into the 1950s, where a messed-up and conflicted American expat, William Lee, played equally hypnotically by Daniel Craig (NYTW’s Othello), cruises the colorful bars of Mexico City looking for young men to have sex with. There’s a no apologies edge to his engagements, understanding what he is doing openly, but without really embracing the meaning and its vibrancy. It’s a fascinatingly captivating, sensual experience, the film “Queer“, which, in its strongest moments, delivers forth, with epic beauty, an utterly intoxicating construction. But it does linger and wander at times like the drunken man at the center of this personal revolution, who may not be ready and willing to give himself that very titular label. Yet, he surveys with determination for those who might. He sits, with an edgy, vibrating energy from deep within, at the bar in these well-crafted rooms, drinking mezcal until he can hardly maneuver himself through those perfectly recreated streets. Or until he sees someone, a man, sitting on his own, obviously hoping for the same kind of thing he is searching for.
The air is thick with drunken lust and complicated discomfort, as Lee collides and cruises towards sex and passion inside Luca Guadagnino’s captivating deep dive into inner turmoil and the complex constructs of love. Born in the air in that seedy corner of a crowded bar, or flying above a cockfight, naturally, “Queer” unveils the streets of Mexico City overflowing with drunken dejected energy to live out and breathe in on a whole different level than his far more dreamy “Call Me by Your Name“. That was a movie connected to love, elevating a touching romance into a visual treat and masterpiece of sexual and emotional awakening. It’s still my favored aroma, but the Italian air had a different flavor than this new film, based on the novel, “Queer” by William S. Burroughs. With a screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes (2024’s “Challengers“), “Queer” unpacks a unique sexual tension that feels more guttural and somewhat desperate, and floats it out into the air for us to take in, sometimes with a straightforward inhale, but other times like a hazy high dragged in from something much stronger than weed.
The writer Burroughs reputedly has said in a press interview, in response to a question regarding the gay rights movement, that “I have never been gay a day in my life and I’m sure as hell not a part of any movement.” And that sense of removal and self-denial find their uncomfortable home in Craig’s amazingly dulled and blurred vision of what is around him and what is living deep inside. He vibrates with an intensity that is utterly hypnotic, managing himself better in the world he has curated when his verbal communication (and his alcohol intake) is kept to a minimum. His awkwardness and discomfort override his senses, overflowing into messy, overblown formulations in movement and words. It’s both comical and depressing, watching his drunken physical reactions to his lust and desire, yet we feel for him, hoping that an awakening is coming soon for this desperate man.
He believes he is too clever for these “Queers“, reflecting to his friend, Joe, played fascinatingly by Jason Schwartzman (1998’s “Rushmore“), that if he believes the man he is pursuing is “so queer“, Lee loses interest. “That’s what I don’t like about queers,” he states, with a voice dulled by too much alcohol and drug use, specifically heroin, which we bear witness to him administering early on. But all this changes when he begins a complex entanglement with the handsome American, Eugene Allerton, played with subtle complexities by Drew Starkey (2018’s “Love, Simon“). This complex creation is based on Adelbert Lewis Marker (1930–1998), a recently discharged American Navy serviceman from Florida, who befriended Burroughs in Mexico City. Allerton is also wandering and wondering, living on borrowed time and the army’s money, entwining himself with the smitten Lee down a jungle path that both have yet to take.
Split into chapters detailing shifts in his emotional dance with desire, lust, and love, this wild and wonderfully strange film about self-acceptance, transcends simple narrative. It challenges us to accept the wandering and wicked self-denial and hatred that live, maybe in them both, although we see the ravages of that war more obviously in Craig’s frame. Allerton holds it closer in, stoically, until it overwhelms, forcing him to move faster through the unknown path. It’s an incredible construction to witness, as we watch Lee spin himself around in drunken acts of twisted jealousy and lustful need for the young man. It’s a powerful experience, and this investigation of what it feels to have something that moves above and beyond carnal pleasure is meticulously unwrapped and teased out over time.
Allerton and Lee do have some painful but loving grief that lives within them, itching at their skins underneath the casual banter they enjoy. Determined to be examined in the bodies of one another, they shift back and forth like a pendulum fueled by discomfort and internalized homophobia. Starkey’s Allerton fascinatingly appears more calm and emotionally solid, but his internal conflict is there, readily seen and felt by Lee. It’s avoidant and detached, which only pushes Lee onward, as he watches Allerton engage with a woman friend at the bar, putting up unseen barriers in an instant that hurt Lee to the core.
The abruptness both vexes and confounds Lee, even as he becomes more and more aware of his own stumbling limitations for honesty and truth. Yet he tries, letting his lust manifest itself in the way he drinks, moves about, and reaches desperately for another, and for Allerton. Schwartzman’s Joe sheds some fascinating light on the stolen complications in their humorous interactions, suggesting that Lee could just ask for what he wants and needs from Allerton. But Lee knows that the asking would ruin it all and make them both into something he sees as ugly and completely undesirable.
Under the watchful magnetic eye of cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (2018’s “Suspiria“) and this amazing production team, led by production designer Stefano Baisi (“After the Hunt“), “Queer” continues to expand and demystify in the tinted colors of nighttime and the starkness of day. It lives within the tones and treads within the physicality of the visuals, sometimes engagingly, but other times taking its drunken, slurred time. Lee’s combustible energy around his relationship with the ideas of homosexuality, and with Allerton, fuels his addictive acts of self-destruction, through his heroin use and his drinking. It’s a subtle but clear depiction of self-loathing and desperate need, that Craig delivers with absolute conviction brilliantly, even if the mannerisms are pushed almost too strongly to the surface.
It works somehow, but the cutting indifference that pops up between him and the man he is overwhelmingly falling in love with finally spins him out of control, crashing into his own personal discomfort with need and love. In the most dynamic of interactions, his spiraling behavior pushes Allerton away, at least on the surface, leaving him more desperate than before. The pain escalates, and the need for mental escape slams in hard, that is until he proposes a South American journey, one that he will pay for, for the purpose of re-engagement, away from those other-person distractions, but also for a long-desired adventure with a drug called yage.
He explains, in complex layered arenas, that he has read about this drug, discovered in the rain forests of South America, that supposedly enhances a person’s natural telepathic ability. There is discussion about its use by governments in mind control experiments, and he is determined to experience this journey. We can feel it in our bones that there is a deeper meaning in this trek into the deep dark rainforest, but it remains somewhat unclear what he is really after. Yet it seems obvious that he does want to experience this with Allerton, and in that need, there is truth. He is told this drug is not like any other, “it’s a mirror, that you might not like what you see,” says the good Dr. Cotter, played magnificently unrecognizable by Lesley Manville (Bristol Old Vic/BAM’s A Long Day’s Journey ..), who helps him find this experience. And as filmed, it’s an experience unlike no other.
What he’s hoping for, possibly, is a stronger bond with Allerton, who struggles to emotionally be fully engaged with Lee, even at the best of times. What they get after taking in this drug is something internally and emotionally powerful, where body parts melt into one another, like Lee has always wanted, even in the eyes of the wise, good doctor. But the outcome is not what Lee intended, and the film follows, fluttering around in that same disappointment in the final half. The surreal imagery finds its source, and conjures up universes of connectivity and attunement that scare the younger man with its intensity. And we are left, like Lee, wondering about how it all went so wrong. Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” is the wildest of rides, one that wanders drunkenly around a psyche that is in need of some healing and self-acceptance. It doesn’t always hold our attention as much as I had hoped, veering far and away from the more dreamy aspects that his other film floated out under that strong Italian sun and moon, but when it connects, we feel “Queer” vibrate inside, connecting to aspects of our own journey, even the parts we’d rather not remember.
