Movie Review: Daniel Craig Shines in 'Queer'

Queer

Directed by Luca Guadignino

Written by Justin Kuritzkes

Starring Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman

Release Date November 27th, 2024

Published December 2nd, 2024

Queer stars Daniel Craig in an adaptation of a William S. Burroughs novel of the same title. Craig stars as William Lee, an independently wealthy traveler on the run from a drug bust in the states and hiding out in Mexico City. Lee has found a small collection of fellow outsiders, gay hustlers, and so on, fleeing from the prying eyes of 1950s America for the seedy underbelly of Mexico City. While Lee enjoys the nightlife of the area, he’s a romantic at heart who seems to fall in love with the wrong man at every turn.

His newest love interest is a mysterious former serviceman, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a strikingly handsome and much younger man who may or may not be gay. Eugene gives many mixed signals about his interests in men, spending much of his time with a female sex worker but also asking around about popular gay hook up spots. Eventually, Lee’s obsession with Eugene landed them both in the same nightclub and, with a little liquid encouragement, the two fall into bed.

But the following day, Eugene’s gone, ghosting his new lover and leaving Lee heartbroken but unwilling to give up on their relationship. Lee’s persistence and Eugene’s desire for drugs and adventure eventually take them on a perilous journey deep into the Mexican jungle. There, they hope to encounter an eccentric former American doctor who may have access to a mysterious drug with a potent high, strong enough to bring many a traveler on a strange trip into the jungle. The drug is ayahuasca and the trip Eugene and Lee take on the drug is revealing, shocking, and ultimately sad.

I cannot claim much familiarity with the works of William S. Burroughs. I know of him but I can’t say much about his work, it just never appealed to me. So, whether Queer is a faithful adaptation of the source material, I cannot say. As a movie, it’s languid and sweaty in a way that sounds like descriptions I’ve read of Burroughs’ work. Daniel Craig has an appealing distraught sadness to him. He’s perpetually lonely and longing, even when in the company of many. He has a lost quality that grows poignant as his hopes that ayahuasca will be his ticket to unlocking his relationship with Eugene.

Drew Starkey’s performance is prickly and unpredictable. Is he a gay man? Is he an addict who hooks up with anyone he thinks can get him high? The movie is unclear about Eugene with purpose, the story is about Lee and Lee is incapable of seeing Eugene clearly. Lee is so lost in his loneliness and desire that he only sees the parts of Eugene that serve his desires and there is a compelling agony in Lee’s tunnel vision approach to their relationship. Daniel Craig’s brave lean into Lee’s weaknesses and all consuming desires drives what little plot there is in Queer.

Director Luca Guadagnino is, perhaps, our foremost chronicler of desire in all shapes and misshapes. Guadagnino is exceptionally observant of people whose desires conflict with their reality. People who desire those who don’t desire them or people who use the desire of others as a way to manipulate relationships for their benefit. Guadagnino is brilliantly observant and uses his settings to underscore his character studies. In this case, the sweat-soaked heat of Mexico City adds a boiling intensity to Lee’s desires, as if he’s suffering from heat stroke and his vision of the world is shrinking to only allow him to see the objects he thinks can relieve him.

Queer has its faults, it lingers and languishes a bit, but overall, the performances are so compelling that the film takes on an absorbing quality. It’s certainly not a movie for all audiences, it’s gritty and raw at times in ways that more mainstream audiences may not be able to handle. That said, if you want to explore the lives and desires of a man like Lee, middle aged, desperate, lonely, you will find yourself moved by his story and especially his unquenched desire for Eugene that drives him to near ruin.

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