1950. William Lee, an American expat in Mexico City, spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community. His encounter with Eugene Allerton, an expat former soldier, new to the city, shows him, for the first time, that it might be finally possible to establish an intimate connection with somebody.

The Garden Cinema View:

Luca Guadagnino’s second feature of 2024 works from another script from Challengers writer Justin Kuritzkes, but the resulting film is quite different from their propulsive tennis throupling. True to the spirit of William S. Burroughs, Queer presents a frank look at addiction, albeit within a seductive and somewhat fantastical milieu, and dabbles in surreal imagery before diving headfirst down the rabbit hole.

Daniel Craig is impressive as Burroughs surrogate William Lee. With a face as crumpled as his stained linen suit, his performance comes over as a seedy riff on elements of both Benoit Blanc and his iteration of Bond. Not a ‘safe’ hero for the audience, he nevertheless carries the first acts of Queer, hunting for booze and young men amongst an oddly artificial and anachronistic vision of 1950 Mexico City. This is a world of power games and construction, set into relief against the (naked) truth of several intimate scenes, shot erotically and tenderly by Guadagnino and Apichatpong Weerasethakul regular collaborator Sayombhu Mukdeeprom.

Whether audiences have the patience for Lee’s self-destructive antics, or the film’s later digressions into fantasy will, as with Burroughs’ work itself, be highly subjective. Like the notorious author, Guadagnino continues to plough his own furrow, and Queer is, if anything else, an idiosyncratic work.

Cast:
Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville