“Do I taste like vomit?” Allerton (Drew Starkey) asks Lee (Daniel Craig). The younger man has just finished puking his guts out after drinking some of Lee’s cheap Mexican brandy. But they’re locking lips and getting ready to fuck, dizzingly continuing their fleeting days and nights of binge-drinking and promiscuous sex.
Queer feverishly adapts the short novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs, and does it justice. This is a sweaty drama that oozes cheap booze from its pores. Director Luca Guadagnino reunites with his Challengers scribe Justin Kuritzkes to deliver another essential addition to the queer canon. The film boasts a faithful take on Burroughs’ work, but also a radically transformative one. Burroughs’ Queer, while published, was never actually finished, so the adaptation essentially “completes” the 100ish page story anew. And what an intoxicating trip it is!
The story unfolds in a similar episodic fashion as ex-pat American Lee trolls Mexican gay bars for hot young men. He clearly has his sights on Allerton, a 20-something photographer who catches the eye of every man and woman at the joint. But Lee’s smoldering, brooding sex eyes catch his interest. Allerton plays hard to get, though, and edges Lee round after round at the bar. The closer Lee gets to having his bone smooched, the quicker Allerton teasingly pulls away. But the prize is worth the wait.
If Guadagnino received any criticism that his previous films like Call Me By Your Name were a bit cold in the sex department, he shows with Queer that he got the memo. There’s sweaty sex galore as Daniel Craig fucks his way through Mexico. Lee enjoys quick, rough transactional sex with any bloke he can get. But the hook-ups with Allerton play differently. There’s genuine passion as both actors fully commit to the moment. They lose themselves in the intense physical passion that envelopes Lee and Allerton. An aura of desire overtakes the seedy apartments and hotels that house their trysts.
Guadagnino’s eye perfectly captures the grime and dirt of Burroughs’ prose, too. This is not a postcard perfect Mexico one wants to visit. Semen-stained sheets mark the hotel rooms with memories of other trysts, while Lee’s own seed adorns his linen shirt like a badge of honour, left there by Allerton after wiping himself up. Queer is a film that makes a viewer feel dirty, but in a good way.
The film also thrills with a completely unexpected performance by Craig. He displays a layer of emotional nakedness that he’s never been given the opportunity to show. Moreover, his Lee is a man who hides within himself. His brooding eyes speak volumes while his burly physique injects a refreshingly masculine presence into the queer canon.
The story, appropriately, feels alternatively drunk and hungover. Lee’s days and nights unfold with the cadence of an addict’s hunt for the next fix. The film itches and one restlessly watches Lee drink, stumble, shoot up, and somehow maintain his virility to be rough and tender with his boy.
The film smartly situates this cocktail of booze and sex within the era of its time. Brilliant use of double exposure evokes Lee’s unrequited desires and repressed urges. His junkie fix isn’t necessarily looking for a bedroom encounter, but rather the chance to hold his lover’s hand in public or stroke his hair in a movie theatre. Allerton, meanwhile, continually reminds Lee that he “isn’t queer.” He takes home the odd woman and puts limits on their lovemaking to prove it to himself. Although Lee isn’t buying.
Queer, Burroughs’ most overtly gay work, largely draws praise for its fictionalised take on the author’s relationship with sailor Lewis Marker. It’s an era when being out, especially as a celebrity, wasn’t okay even in artistic circles. Lee’s fatalist behaviour smartly embodies the internalised self-loathing that too often feeds itself with a cycle of alcohol. The cause and solution to all life’s problems, Homer Simpson might say.
All the rough and dirty sex leads to a trip further down south where the adaption really expands the novel. Queer embellishes the story beat in which Lee leads Allerton on a hunt through the Ecuadorian jungle in search of ayahuasca. The quest for the hallucinogenic drug brings them to a zany researcher, played with dramatic gusto by Lesley Manville. Dr. Cutter gives them the fateful drug, while inspires a heated trip.
The hazy fever dream inevitably brings issues of pacing, but the sense of restlessness and unease is key. Queer works best when it goes full Naked Lunch (not in that way) and the adaptation somewhat comments on Burroughs’ oeuvre. The ayahuasca sequence, which includes prolonged moments of silence in which the actors explore one another with a surreal odyssey that borders upon body horror. The film feels truest to Burroughs the greater it deviates from the writer’s text. Guadagnino further latches on to Burroughs’ brainwave with an anachronistic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and a soundtrack that uses Kurt Cobain and to evoke the author’s unquenchable melancholy. It’s a work that displays an artistic voice inspired by, and indebted to, another.
