Queer: Steamy PeriodThe drama
Hats off to Daniel Craig. The 56-year-old star couldn’t have done more to shake off the image of Ian Fleming’s ultra-heterosexual alpha superspy after five James Bond films in 15 years.
First, Craig played discreet, gay detective Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out films, and now he’s dropped discretion altogether in the steamy, physical Queer, which had its world premiere last night at the Venice Film Festival.
Adapted from William S. Burroughs’ autobiographical novel of the same name, Queer is set in the early 1950s, primarily in Mexico City. There, among other gay American expatriates, dissolute writer William Lee (Craig) spends his time drinking tequila by the bucketful and chasing young men.
One of them is Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), with whom Lee quickly falls in love.
At first, he’s not entirely sure whether Gene shares his “inclinations” and refrains from making any moves while director Luca Guadagnino cleverly uses camera and editing room tricks to show how Lee longs to do with his body what he can’t yet.
“Hats off to Daniel Craig,” writes Brian Viner, as the 56-year-old star shrugs off the image of Ian Fleming’s ultra-straight alpha super-spy in his latest same-sex romance.
Based on William Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical novel about obsessive lust, it stars Craig as American expatriate and war veteran William Lee, who has an affair with a younger man, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a drug addict and discharged Navy SEAL.
But soon the pair become lovers, leading to some sweaty and extremely graphic sex scenes that might scare away those who still think firmly of Craig as 007 – one of fiction’s most irrepressible seducers, to be sure, but only of women.
In this film, however, he doesn’t look much like Bond. Lee is always unshaven, sports a mid-century haircut and is almost always drunk.
Craig does a terrific job of making him seem completely real: an irresponsible, heavy-drinking, chain-smoking, drug-addled, gun-slinging, promiscuously queer bar-goer in an environment where none of the above really makes him stand out from the rest.
That package includes another promiscuous American expat, played with glorious rakishness by Jason Schwartzman, whose encounters with young Mexican men always seem to end with them robbing him.
Lee isn’t particularly happy either, even after sleeping with Gene. The young man is a fickle guy, who seems to be attracted to both women and men.
Desperate, Lee offers a deal: Gene will accompany him to South America and be “nice to me twice a week” if he foots the bill?
It’s not entirely clear what Lee does for a living, as he always seems too drunk to write, and if the film has one flaw it’s this: there’s not enough backstory.
Frankly, there’s not much to tell at first. Lee thinks Gene is a mess and that’s all. But the look of the film and the period details are exquisitely done. For those unfamiliar with the work of William S. Burroughs, think Graham Greene.
Craig does a terrific job of making him seem completely real: an irresponsible, heavy-drinking, chain-smoking, drug-addled, gun-slinging, promiscuously queer bar-goer in an environment where none of the above really makes him stand out from the rest.
Drew Starkey, Omar Apollo, Jonathan Anderson, Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, Justin Kuritzkes, Daniel Craig, Luca Guadagnino (pictured, left to right)
It’s not easy to steal this film from Craig, but if anyone can do it, it’s Lesley Manville.
If there had been a decidedly libertine gay theme in Greene’s novels about Latin America in the mid-20th century, this film would make you feel as if you’d stepped into one. You can almost feel the heat, taste the chiles, smell the sweat.
Plus, narrative-wise, things are about to get hot in more ways than one. After recovering from dysentery and other illnesses related to his prodigious heroin and cocaine intake, Lee takes Gene deep into the Ecuadorian jungle in search of a drug called “yagé,” which is said to confer telepathic powers on those bold (or idiotic) enough to take it, as well as crazy hallucinations.
From this point on, the film also becomes absolutely crazy, as if Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes (who also collaborated on this year’s excellent Challengers) had been under the effects of yagé.
But her most extraordinary performance comes from Lesley Manville, as an alarmingly formidable and almost unhinged American botanist and doctor who has long since gone native, is immersed in the jungle and knows how to please her curious visitors.
It’s not easy to steal this movie from Craig, but if anyone can do it, it’s Manville.
Angelina Jolie is probably assured of the Best Actress prize here in Venice, for her committed portrayal of opera singer Maria Callas in the uneven Maria, but if Manville receives a Best Supporting Actress nomination when the Oscar nominations come around, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. Queer is worth seeing for her alone, but for so many other things too.
There is no confirmed UK release date for Queer yet.