'Queer' Review

Queer had its North American Premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. A24 will release it in theaters later this year.

Desperation and desire go hand-in-hand within Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, an adaptation of the legendary William S. Burroughs’ early short novel. These are qualities that the famed workaholic Italian director has found a knack for expressing, doing so in opposing fashions this year with the stylishly Hollywood-y Challengers and this magnetically opaque hedonistic journey. 

Everything is presented in its most sensual form through Guadagnino’s eyes and ears, with the destination this time being Mexico in the 1950s. World War II is over and those returning from Europe and the Pacific are looking for a little rest and relaxation. The American public still (and will continue to for decades) looks upon homosexuality as a disease, forcibly creating the neighboring southern country as a haven filled with life’s great pleasures.

The streetlights cast beams of heaven down upon the men and women of the night, the bars are always open, and everyone’s thirst is perpetually unquenchable. But Guadagnino and production designer Stefano Baisi don’t stop there, replacing establishing shots with dreamy illustrations filled with miniatures and backdrops that seem much larger and more expressive than they ever could have been. This version of Mexico isn’t being viewed through an objective lens, it’s someone’s reconstruction of a long memory.

That memory belongs to William Lee (Daniel Craig), one of those GIs who left America once he got off his Navy boat and never looked back. Donning a sharp outfit and an even sharper tongue, his days consist of bar trips, flirtations with the boys passing through, and consuming what drugs and alcohol he can get his hands on. It’s a fast and cheap lifestyle, one that comes to a halt once he lays eyes on fellow American Gene (Drew Starkey). The youngster arrives on the scene in slow motion and is engulfed by the blaring words of Nirvana’s Come As You Are. You can feel the temperature rising in the room rising just as much as it is within William’s loins, with this introduction being just the first of many moments where the anachronistic soundtrack and Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s camera concoct some of the most potently erotic sequences put to celluloid.

That dichotomy between the audio and the visuals translates to William and Gene’s relationship, with the former trying to play younger and the latter containing much more maturity than his fresh face lets on. They have a unique honesty with each other, which Guadagnino transfers to the bedroom with as much raw authenticity as he had with Call Me by Your Name and last year’s All of Us Strangers. Craig is at his most appealingly charming here, mixing the sexual power of James Bond and the eccentricities of Benoit Blanc. He sees what he is through the mirror that is Starkey’s performance, the enigmaticness of Gene being his most appealing and perplexing quality.

Burroughs’ novel was published in its unfinished form, something that Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes emulate within their project, even down to the literal runtime, which has been the subject of much scrutiny as it kept getting whittled down since its announcement. A question came to Guadagino during the North American premiere screening at the Toronto International Film Festival asking if the initial three-hour cut would ever see the light of day. The director shyly laughed and said that this was the film that he made, the hesitation in his voice almost signaling that he has as much desire to share his undiluted version as much as audiences want to consume it. The current 135-minute version is a shaggy mini-beast, hypnotically blending reality and dreams as it traverses from the urban hustle to the isolated jungles.

Comparisons to Bardo may be appropriate in terms of trying to understand the imagery and intention behind each scene. There are moments when everything is frustratingly translucent, just escaping your grasp no matter how hard you try to grab ahold of it. But even in its haziness, there’s an alluring power that prevents your ignorance from clouding the enjoyment.