Queer is a short novel by William Burroughs written in Mexico City as he waited for the trial after accidentally pushing his wife in the head and killed her on the spot. He wanted to play William Tell on the drunk but missed the glass on his wife’s head.
Luca Guadagnino’s feverish filming of Queer does not smell as little of Cronenberg, and there is much that is connected in an intricate way: the middle -aged William Lee in Queer is named with the tripping pest fighter from Burrough’s naked lunch. A recurring centipeting is reminiscent of the insect dreams, albeit in natural size, unlike in Cronenberg’s classic filmization of naked lunch. Most likely, the character Lee is the same, especially a slightly disguised version of the author himself.
Daniel Craig plays William Lee who is in Mexico City and tormented cares his abuse. More or less high or drunk, he is looking for beautiful young men at bars where men of different ages meet. He becomes obsessed with the young Eugene with whom he initiates a strange and constant power -changing relationship.
Never has Daniel Craig looked so sad with the sweat runny over a backfilling technical face. This is Guadagninos Forté: musty physicality. Sweat, semen, a yummy soundscape and a look that succeeds in sexualizing even a knee or a big toe.
What I think is Guadagnino’s great weakness is his inability to tell with the rigor. He in the usual order spreads out too much, Queer is also sprawling to a thousand with their various chapters where Lee and Eugene travel to the Amazon in search of the plant Yage (Ayahuasca) which is said to give telepathic properties.
Psychedelic drug trips are rarely interesting to look at for outsiders, but here I actually have to give the films an eloge for managing the Ahyahuascatrip aesthetically interesting. Eugene and William fall into each other, they move under a common skin as it would be a thin blanket.
It is far from enough to save Queer, which may, however, be interesting for real burrough nerds. But the painting of the story: the desperate will to communication and closeness, the inevitable power asymmetry of relationships, never really comes out.
Despite actors who give everything, musty sex scenes and stylish trips.