Queer is showing at BFI London Film Festival and arrives in cinemas nationwide from Friday, December 13.
“The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands when the baneful word seared my reeling brain—I was a homosexual.” – William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs wrote Queer in 1952, yet it would not be published until 1985 and remains unfinished. Like E. M. Forster’s Maurice, it’s possible Burroughs felt Queer was too personal, too, well, queer! Or maybe it reflected behaviours and events Burroughs would have rather buried. Burroughs was no stranger to controversy, making his decision not to publish or finish Queer rather peculiar. In 1953 he published Junky under the name William Lee, an autobiographical novel about his drug addiction and his homosexuality; Queer was, in many ways, a continuation of this story and a bridge to his next book, the divisive, Naked Lunch, published in 1959. The reason Queer sat unpublished until the mid-80s and was never finished may never be clear, but one thing is, Queer, like all of Burroughs’ work, remains divisive, just like the man, and, therefore, like David Cronenberg’s loose adaptation of Naked Lunch in 1991, Luca Guadagnino’s film is sure to divide audiences.
Set in Mexico City in the early fifties, Queer follows William Lee’s (Daniel Craig) pursuit of a younger man, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a sexy American drifter whose true sexuality and desires are never wholly explicit. Lee is also an American seeking escape and freedom in the bars of Mexico City. Here, he can feed his drug and alcohol addiction freely while at the same time indulging in sex free from persecution or discussion, sometimes with rent boys and always with the chiselled beauty of a younger man. He is a wolf in a sweat-drenched white suit, constantly stalking his prey, ready to pounce at any opportunity. But Eugene is different to the rent boys or passing travellers Lee is accustomed to. His beauty is magnetic, his presence electric, and his conversations mysterious. He is an alluring enigma Lee cannot solve, a puzzle box Lee must own, but one he will never understand.
Guadagnino‘s bravery in adapting Queer should not be underestimated, nor should the skill of screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes (Challengers) in unpicking this knotty literary maze. Burroughs’ work is notoriously difficult to adapt, and the overt and covert themes presented in Queer and the unfinished nature of the story presented Guadagnino and Kuritzkes with a unique challenge. But they rose to this challenge by creating a hypnotic, haunting and intensely erotic puzzle box of a movie. Every frame of Queer is brazenly bold, enticingly seductive and utterly timeless, from Mexico City’s ageing French art deco buildings to the surrealism of Lee’s drug-fuelled episodes and a jungle expedition in search of an emotional bond. Queer is a movie that is designed to be felt rather than purely watched, a multi-sensory experience that defies simple explanation. It’s a film that carves a lasting place in your memory.
Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey’s exceptional performances sit at the heart of Guadagnino’s exquisitely crafted tale. Craig has offered us some truly electric performances during his career, from Love Is the Devil (1998), where he played Francis Bacon’s lover, to his chilling portrait of a disgruntled son searching for his father’s love and approval in Road to Perdition (2002), but Queer may well be his best yet. In Craig’s hands, William Lee shares much in common with Bogarde’s Gustav von Aschenbach in Death in Venice (1971). Like Aschenbach, Lee is a man whose life has become a performance. However, unlike the cold, closeted and uptight Aschenbach, Lee’s performance is exuberant, colourful and vivacious, yet equally as delicate as Thomas Mann’s literary creation. Craig isn’t interested in whether you like the brash and horny Lee or whether you condone his behaviour; instead, he wants you to look deep beneath William Lee’s performance. There, you will find a damaged boy under the skin of an ageing man: a boy who learnt to hide as he became a man, seeking his gratification in the shadows and only embracing his queer identity through an intricate performance fuelled by narcotics and booze. Lee is a mere caricature, with the real William Lee buried deep beneath the surface. In the brief moments where Lee’s age-old mask slips, Craig allows us to see the real man: damaged, lonely and insecure.
If Craig’s Lee shares some traits with Aschenbach, you might expect Starkey’s intelligent, sharply dressed Eugene Allerton to be our Tadzio, and there are, indeed, similarities; Eugene is aware of the power he wields due to his youth and beauty and at the same time, like Tadzio he is an enigma. But that is where the similarities end. Eugene is a deeply sexual man, not an androgynous teen boy; he needs fulfilment and uses his beauty and youth to get what he desires. Whether Eugene has feelings for Lee or whether Lee is a mere vehicle for the experiences he is collecting is left hanging, but what is clear is the urgency and eroticism of their physical connection, even if the emotions remain obscure. There is no romance here; no simplistic love will conquer all messages, just the stark reality that no matter what Lee chooses to believe, Eugene will never be a partner or even a friend with benefits; he is just a traveller passing through, consuming everything he can before the light of his youth also starts to fade.
Beautiful and beguiling, Queer asks far more questions than it answers, as it teases us, entices us, surprises us, then leaves us hanging. Some will say that Queer is a mere hot and heavy tale of infatuation and desire. But for me, it is also a story about crafted performances of protection and the inability to escape the true self beneath the performance. It is a tale of the fleeting energy and beauty of youth, and how quickly they morph into regrets and the invisibility of older age. It is also a story of a yearning for something more than just sex. Queer is erotic yet distant, beautiful but ugly, and melancholic yet jubilant. It’s not a love story; it’s a red-hot meeting of two travelling souls at different stages of their ’50s queer journey, with one just blooming as the petals slowly fall and the colour fades from the other.
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