Queer Review

The idea of wrangling William S. Burroughs‘s work into a filmable screenplay is a daunting one. Foundation of the Beat Generation, William Burroughs’s manic experimentations with prose and narrative form resulted in his legacy as a trailblazer of the postmodern novel. David Cronenberg’s unique body horror experimentations lifted Burroughs’s esoteric Naked Lunch from the page, but, ultimately, he struggled to combine his auteurship with Burroughs’s transgressive prose. However, with Queer, Luca Guadagnino silkily manages to entwine his style with the novel’s impenetrable sensibilities.

Queer, an autobiographical short novel by Burroughs, is a partial sequel to his earlier work, Junky. Burroughs wrote the novel after he fled the US following his accidental role in his wife’s death, placing the narrative around his unchecked experiences with heroin addiction. The film follows Burroughs’s literary alter ego William Lee, in Mexico City as he navigates his unquenchable sexuality, ravished junk addiction, and growing infatuation with discharged American Navy serviceman, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Lee is a dope fiend with means; he wanders with gay abandon from bar to bar to pick up men with the same ease he picks up tequila shots. Allerton, with his polished style and aloof mystery, enamours Lee from first sight. The pair strike up a loose contract, agreeing to become travel companions and occasional lovers while they travel through South America in search of a mythic drug named yage (Ayahuasca), which Lee believes can unlock telepathic awareness in the human mind.

Like his previous queer literary adaptation, Call Me By Your Name, the film is full of yearning. Where Chalamet’s Elio constructed his days around his infatuation with Oliver, Lee’s yearning is boundless and touches every inch of the screen. He yearns to escape his past, he craves the euphoric release of heroin and he anguishes for touch. Most of all he wants to unlock the key of telepathy: ‘I want to talk to you without saying words’ he tells Eugene in a burst of drunken desperation. In his previous works, we see how familiar Guadagnino is with this form of unspoken yearning. In Challengers we see it in the way Art uses his foot to pull Patrick’s chair closer to him before they eat Churros. Guadagnino masterly constructs small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them moments in which we see these almost insignificant expressions of longing and desire. This makes him perfectly suited to create the all-consuming idiosyncrasies of yearning at the heart of Queer. In his filmmaking, Guadagnino does talk without words, he demonstrates the existence of the exact thing Lee is so desperately looking for in the gentle scene where Eugene places his leg over Lee’s to keep him warm in the night.

Due to the surrealist elements of the film, it’s easy to mistake the narrative as exclusionary. Yet, the heart of the film is engulfed in the human experience of looking to be loved and the literal journey we go on to find the kind of love that doesn’t exist in spoken words. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom alongside composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, sharply captures Lee’s hazy desperation. The camerawork and score accentuate the sensuality and ion within the screenplay while also capturing the cold, disorientating moments Lee is haunted by the past. The film’s needle drops are smarty subverted: Nirvana’s Come As You Are has never sounded so raunchy. The sex scenes are captured with rough urgency and ion, but Luca still regains control, never sliding into overindulgence. He teases us with intimacy, giving us glimpses, knowing just when to move the camera’s gaze toward the window,

Daniel Craig gives one of the most exciting turns of his career. The actor’s post-bond work has been a succession of unexpected twists and turns. Knives Out allowed Craig to crank up the fun and play with improvisation, giving him the exact toolkit to tackle a role like William Lee. Craig’s character work here is unparalleled: he revives the icon Burroughs drawl without falling into caricature and uses his physical mannerisms to create a man who appears collected but is brimming with flaws and goofy insecurities. Drew Starsky is equally surefooted and will be impossible to ignore this awards season. His performance is impenetrable and versatile, managing to be soft and vulnerable but also reserved and hostile. Significantly, a shocking moment when he suddenly pushes Lee to the floor after they spend the night together, reminds us that love isn’t always what we want it to be.

Although some viewers lesser versed in William Burroughs’s bizarre encounters with death and addiction might feel isolated from the film, Queer is an electric piece of work and one of Guadanigo’s most experimental and arresting films to date, and it’s worthwhile to do a little literary homework to fully enjoy everything the film has to offer. Hopefully, the film is one of many steps in the director’s ambition to bring queer literature to the screen.