Queer (2024), Dir Luca Guadagnino, A24, MUBI, mac Birmingham, 4☆☆☆☆. Review: Dan Auluk.
Queer (2024), Dir Luca Guadagnino, A24, MUBI, mac Birmingham,
4☆☆☆☆. Review: Dan Auluk.
“A real treat of strangeness. Bold and bizarre!”
Running Time: 137 minutes
Luca Guadagnino (Director) and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes transport us to Mexico City in the 1950’s with their adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical novel, Queer, exploring the longing for intimacy, affection and the desire to be loved within a fevered alcohol and drug fuelled existence, in the freedom of the South America queer scene.
In Queer, told in a chapter format, William Lee (Craig), is an alcohol dependent, heroin-addicted, a depressed writer with a self-destructing lifestyle; bar-flying, from bar to bar, around Mexico City, until he makes eye contact with Eugene Allerton (Starkey), a clean-cut serviceman. Lee is compelled to connect with Eugene, thinking he could be the one, but unsure whether he is queer. After an alcohol induced evening, they both connect sexually but soon after this encounter Eugene is not sure if he is queer and feels oppressed when his boundaries are not respected and distances himself from Lee. Eventually, after financial persuasion and a sexual contract, Eugene agrees to travel to South America with Lee, who is on the hunt for a jungle plant which will allow for telepathy but ultimately seeking a higher state of consciousness and his fear of losing love. No spoilers except to say they connect in a totally unexpected way – a real visual treat if you can stomach it. In this third chapter of the film this is where the surrealism develops a life of its own and becomes strange very fast, leading to an abstract ending that becomes stranger still.
Although the film doesn’t feel long at over 2 hours and 17 minutes, I felt another 30 minutes to allow the film to breathe, may have given a chance to see Starkey’s character explore his sexuality and any potential deep-rooted shame of acceptance, further. The comfortable seating and intimate venue of the gorgeous ‘Mac Birmingham’ cinema also helped the experience.
Daniel Craig is outstanding and worthy of any award nominations this season, delivering an authentic, intense and impressive performance. The acting from Craig at times is so strong that Starkey’s character almost felt excluded but on reflection this quietness and unspoken feeling offers perhaps a balance. I was very impressed with Lesley Manville as Dr Cotter, totally unrecognisable and unsettlingly quirky, was certainly the highlight for me. Craig is clearly on top form and perhaps this a career defining performance supported by a strong cast including Starkey, Manville and Jason Schwartzman.
The film was beautifully shot, with flare and confidence, great locations, set design and costumes were full of a richness in colour, adding to the sensual, dreamlike detached quality. The cinematography was sublime by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who also worked with Guadagnino on the film Call Me By Your Name (2017). Looks like Guadagino and his team are certainly ones to watch, in creating worlds that mainstream audiences may find challenging but exploring the human condition of sadness, loss and the conflict of asynchronous love and desire through a queer lens.
The sex and intimate physical scenes within the film were full of intensity. Towards the end of the film, we see a bizarre moment of the main characters in a hyper-real, beautiful and unsettling embrace before the come down of disconnection and denial. This was visually a bizarre scene and much needed in terms of pacing and character arcs. There are lots of strange quirky moments in the film throughout, from translucent disembodiment, to show feelings of unspoken affection, and the co-dependence of connection, transcending the reality of existence, with saddening desire and truth. We have a creature eating itself in an infinity symbol, a suggestion of an eternal self-consumption and self-regeneration of never-ending life and death cycles. The introspective moments towards the end are fascinatingly abstract, exploring concepts around purest forms of love, sadness, connection and the re-birth of new beginnings and the suffocation of desire.
From the beginning credits the music soundtrack allows this film to time travel into our recent histories, which was a real treat. At times the soundtrack gave pace to the film and more swagger to the main character, in a good way. Certainly, from anachronistic music choices such as Nirvana’s Come As You Are worked well. I read somewhere Kurt Cobain spent time with Burrough’s and that they became friends; so this song may be a clear homage as well as setting the temperature of the film, in terms of the struggle of acceptance of who we are and how we deal with addiction.
Queer allows Daniel Craig to distance himself from being type cast through what may be considered as hyperreal masculinity in 007 films and reminds us of his potential in earlier films such as Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998). I will be certainly watching Queer again and reading works of Burroughs. Queer is the sort of film that requires at least a second watch! Bravo to mac Birmingham for continually showing a diverse range of cinema.
Cast
Daniel Craig as William Lee
Drew Starkey as Eugene Allerton
Lesley Manville as Dr. Cotter
Jason Schwartzman as Joe Guidry
Henrique Zaga as Winston Moor
Omar Apollo as Chimu Bar Guy
Drew Droege as John Dumé
Ariel Schulman as Tom Weston
David Lowery as Jim Cochan
Andrés Duprat as Doctor Hernandez
Michael Kent as Ship Ahoy Young Man
Colin Bates as Tom Williams
Ronia Ava as Joan
Simon Rizzoni as Bartender
Michaël Borremans as Doctor
Andra Ursuța as Mary
Lisandro Alonso as Mr. Cotter
Lorenzo Pozzan as Joe Guidry's Acquaintance
Crew
Book - William S. Buroughs
Producers - Luca Guadagnino &
Directed - Luca Guadagnino
Screenplay - Justin Kuritzkes
Cinematography - Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Music and Soundtrack - Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Editing - Marco Costa
Casting - Jessica Ronane
Production Design - Stefano Baisai
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