Mamma mia, it ain’t over ’til Guadagnino has had his say. The race for the Golden Lion at the 81st Venice Film Festival just saw another undeniable contender in the Italian auteur’s rendition of Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs’ iconic text Queer. By turns sexy, heartbreaking, and extraordinarily trippy, the film mutates in front of our eyes in its exploration of this strange, strange thing called love. It goes to some pretty wild, profound places and when I say that ending gave me goosebumps? Queer is a triumph.
People say anything is “unadaptable” these days, but when I read Burroughs’ novella (finished in 1953 but not published until 1985), I truly couldn’t fathom how it may be turned into a feature film. It’s very short, doesn’t have much in the way of plot, and follows its own impenetrable logic throughout. For its free-wheeling, experimental spirit, it’s considered one of the defining texts of Beat Generation literature, but how do you translate that for the screen?
Screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes (who also wrote Challengers for Guadagnino) starts off by sticking pretty close to the source material but giving it a much more linear, coherent structure. We meet the protagonist Lee (Daniel Craig), an American expat living in 50’s Mexico City, as he hangs out at gay bars and cruising spots looking to get lucky. When he meets a young man named Allerton (Drew Starkey), immediately he can’t help making a fool of himself nor takes his eyes off him. Kuritzkes adapted this part of the story as more of a traditional, straightforward romance where the hero is falling head over heels for the love interest. Of course, with Lee being gay, the courtship is a little trickier, but eventually the passion is consummated.
When we proceed to part 2 of the film, Allerton has joined Lee on a journey through South America to find a plant called yage which supposedly can enhance telepathic abilities. Once again, Kuritzkes smoothes out the narrative by building the search for yage around Lee’s need to communicate more intimately with Allerton. To me, this reading is not at all apparent based on the original text, and by providing such a definitive interpretation of Lee’s intentions, the story loses some of the openness and mystery of Burroughs’ writing. But what proves Kuritzkes’ daring as a screenwriter to reinterpret or even break away from the source material is the following part 3, where Lee and Allerton find a hermetic botanist (Lesley Manville) in the Ecuadorian jungles and end up trying yage for themselves. As I recall, this never happened in the book but, paradoxically, it’s also where the movie starts to get super weird, which I think Burroughs would have heartily approved.
A faithful adaptation should, above all, capture the essence of the original work. And I think, in a bold and very clever way, Kuritzkes managed to do that with Queer. He took one way of interpreting Burroughs’ enigmatic words and ran with it. The result is something both deeply romantic and utterly singular, a beautiful observation on queer love.
Similarly, the strength of Guadagnino’s direction isn’t fully evident until the film’s second half. For the setup, he directs with his usual fluency and finesse, giving you a clear sense of the characters and their interiority. He also avoided the gay film cliché of only casting young toned hunks (those are there too) but includes older characters of all sizes (including an almost unrecognizable Jason Schwartzman), adding fullness and authenticity to the environment they inhabit. Having said that, his creative genius pops out for me in all the unexpected moments. During Lee’s courting of Allerton, for example, there’s an unexplained fantasy sequence that suddenly cuts away from the cutesy vibes for a minute of spooky imagery that reminds you of the innermost fears and demons of the protagonist.
That sense of unpredictability blossoms when we enter the jungles. As if cut off from reality, this portion of the story initially has an almost goofy air to it that you wouldn’t have expected. And after the yage soup is drunk, something truly shocking happens that takes the film to a whole new, hypnotically surreal level. The surrealness continues in the epilogue, in which we find Lee back in Mexico City alone, whereabouts of Allerton unknown. Instead of the quiet, inconclusive ending conceived by Burroughs, Guadagnino lets his imagination fly and delivers scenes of such visual and emotional impact, it sent chills down my spine. An absolutely mesmerizing summation of the character’s longing, alienation, queerness.
After spending years in the Bond and Knives Out franchise, Craig probably felt the urge to do more intimate character work and he knocked this one out of the park. His portrayal of Lee conveys the combination of horniness, loneliness and edginess with remarkable precision. In his shaky demeanor and sorrowful eyes, you see someone who’s addicted not just to alcohol and drugs, but also to love. There’s a scene where Lee is waiting for Allerton’s decision whether to join him on his South American journey or not. Minimally staged and dialogue-free, we simply stare at his face for a solid minute, and that face tells you so much it’s incredible. Starkey doesn’t have nearly as much to do but his chemistry with Craig sizzles. In one of the crazier scenes towards the end, the two perform a kind of interpretive dance that sees their bodies merging together and, even more so than in the sex scenes (which are hot), the intimacy between the characters really comes through. Manville looks insane as the jungle drug lady and shines in every scene she’s in. Having just seen her in Disclaimer as a grieving mother, it’s mind-boggling to witness her range.
Past Guadagnino-collaborators Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (DP), Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (score) returned and once again delivered stellar work. Mukdeeprom doesn’t just make everything look dreamily beautiful, but captures the dream-like quality of the ever-stranger happenings as well. Reznor and Ross are doing something quite adventurous this time. Their music for the film keeps changing in style, from the playfully amorous, the sultrily exotic to the violently ominous. I especially appreciated their contribution to the film’s mystique in the second half.
Queer tells a seemingly ordinary love story that, over its 135-min runtime, turns very unusual and poignant. There’s a depth to its emotions and a maturity to how it ends that suggests Guadagnino himself may not have been able to do it when he did Call Me by Your Name. An instant entry into the canon of queer cinema and one of the most surprising, devastating films of the year.
