As a longstanding member of the Luca Guadagnino fanclub, the genuine, quite debilitating trepidation that ran through my veins in the lead-up to Queer is like nothing experienced before. Fresh on the heels of Challengers, Queer represents another diversion for the multi-faceted director, here adapting the notorious, long-shelved work of William Burroughs’ Queer. Based both on the book and inspired by the life of Burroughs, Queer, Daniel Craig plays William Lee, an American expat in 1940s Mexico who becomes infatuated with a younger man.
As beguiling as it is challenging and as transfixing as it is alienating, Queer not so much welcomes its audience on a queer odyssey through obsession, addiction and lust as it does throws them down a rabbit hole and lets them tumble for its duration. Expecting more out of its audience than your typical feature film, Queer asks you to both surrender yourself and wilfully endure Guadagnino’s voyage, one that feels as lustfully compelling as it does hopelessly taxing.
Turning to the likes of Fassbinder and Tarkovsky as inspiration for his uncompromisingly bold vision, Guadagnino’s fever dream of a film reunites him with frequent collaborator, cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, to craft a sumptuously enthralling and dreamlike journey. Both masters in displaying and exploring the male body in all its latent sensuality, Queer suitably throbs with desire, capturing the yearning and ecstasy of queer lust in such a breathtakingly, heart-poundingly erotic manner. Orchestrated with such rich attention to detail, Guadagnino’s intoxicating, kaleidoscopic work has a propulsive, visceral energy, a bottomless pit that a first viewing can only scratch the surface of.
Remarkable in his ability to curate strong artistic relationships, each art department does a tremendous job of setting the mood and atmosphere, with such striking costume and production design, the work ranges from slickly stylish to breathlessly suffocating. Alongside that, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross return with a reliably immersive composition, and the use of pre-existing music enriches the tonal specificity of Queer’s mood impressively, made all the more potent with its usage of anachronistic music. Despite how sprawling Guadagnino’s vision is, he has curated a team united with an artistic cohesion that demonstrates his exceptional strength as a filmmaker.
Impossibly dense on a thematic, cerebral layer if somewhat more rigidly straightforward narratively, screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes uses Burroughs’ Queer as a springboard for his own explorations. That Kuritzkes finds something interesting to extract from the muddled novel is an achievement in itself, and he does a formidable job of introducing its characters and developing the fascinating dynamic between them - at least in the first hour. Baked into the first act, in particular, is a tender musing on the relationship between being queer, ageing and loneliness, alongside the desperation of touch that becomes rather hypnotic, suitably alluring while still grounding audiences in something palpable and tangible, achieved through its strong understanding of character.
But there’s no denying that as we descend into its third act it becomes increasingly unforgiving in its psychedelic ramblings, prolonged and provocative in equally strange measures with a deeply mysterious quality that will be the make or break for most viewers - and either response would be utterly justified. As we chart Lee’s addiction and find ourselves stranded in a jungle with Lesley Manville and a snake, the feverish complexities of Queer's crusade gradually loses their charm, challenging in a way Guadagnino has teased before but rarely made so central to his work. Here, it is at the expense of a sharply focused message, favouring the allusive which in return diminishes its emotional currency, which is where we typically thrive with a Guadagnino film, resulting in an intellectually demanding but murkily unsatisfying experiment which fails to stick the landing.
Daniel Craig’s performance is unlike anything we have come to expect from the performer, willingly losing himself within the complexity of Lee’s psyche. As Lee becomes utterly entangled in his obsession and addictions, there’s such underlying volatility to Craig’s turn that only enriches the film’s air of fascination around him; he plays silly, charming, scary and unpredictable, tackling the complexities of a mind without ever losing his grip of the character - he’s a sad, ageing queer stricken with the passing of time, reliance on drugs and desperation to touch. Craig’s work is uninhibited, a refreshing step for a performer who has reached an exciting stage in his career free from the weight of his most prominent film role, and it's rewarding to witness.
Drew Skarsky is similarly captivating as the magnetic Eugene. Of course, his natural beauty is of clear benefit to induce both Craig’s Lee and the audience themselves to find themselves so feverish attracted to him, but the subtleties in his performance, from the glint in his eyes to the cadence in his voice, is astounding. His chemistry with Craig ranges from playful to troublesome, and their power dynamic is a crucial component of the film’s discussion regarding the sacrifices made to forgo loneliness. Skarsky is not the only actor with a terrific supporting turn, with Jason Schwartzman delivering a hilarious performance tinged with a melancholy that enhances the film's thematic discussions in a subtle yet superb way.
Queer is, at least on first watch, enigmatic - by design and to a fault. Descending into the belly of Burroughs' evasive novel provides Guadagnino with his most ambitious entry into his filmography to date, Queer sees him stray away from his strength or storytelling to a more experimental mood piece; while it adds another string to his multi-talented bow, it nevertheless represents his weakest effort since finding mainstream success. Undoubtedly stronger in its lustful, aching opening half than its hallucinatory, surreal second half, Queer boasts spellbinding visuals from Guadagnino and team, side-by-side with extraordinary performances from Daniel Craig and Drew Skarsky. Destined to be fascinatingly, understandably divisive, Queer represents a filmmaker at his most artistically, experimentally, creative free - for better and for worse.