DANIEL CRAIG AS "WILLIAM LEE" IN QUEER

LUCA GUADAGNINO: QUEER (2024)[ - NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

NYFF Spotlight Gala Screening

A dramatization of William S. Burroughs' autobiograpical 1953 novel (published in 1985)

1950. William Lee (Daniel Craig), an American expat in Mexico City in his 30s escaping US drug charges and drinking heavily, spends his days alone at local bars save for a few other members of the American expat homosexual or "queer" community. (It is important to note that at this time the word "queer" did not at all have the air of emblematic pride it has acquired lately.) Lee's encounter with Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a newly arrived ex-serviceman who was with the Counter-intelligence Corps in Germany, leads to an infatuation and hope for intimacy. Lee (william Burroughs' alter ego), whose followup to Junky this is, is off heroin now, with resultingly raw emotions and newly aroused sexual desires.

In his introduction to Queer in 1985 when it was first published Burroughs wrote, "In my first novel, Junky, the protagonist 'Lee' comes across as integrated and self contained, sure of himself and where he is going. In Queer he is disintegrated, desperately in need of contact, completely unsure of himself and of his purpose." The novel wasn't published till over thirty years after he wrote it because at the time Burroughs found it uninteresting, and the experience it evokes too painful, besides which the overt homosexuality of it would have made it scandalous, even illegal, at the time of writing.

Recently Guadagnino has been on a roll with one zinger after another, but Queer is a misstep. This film is a polished but somehow curiously clueless effort by him, Craig, and his costars. How much do they understand about the writer William Burroughs alone because of whom the source book is of any interest? They make the action involving, even engaging, though (save for an entertaining appearance by Lesley Manville) the latter parts are weaker then the early ones. I'm not sure it was meant to be taken this way by Burroughs, and I'm still not sure after watching the film why Guadagnino chose to make it. It would seem to me that rather than the warmth of personality that Daniel Craig, cast spectacularly against type, brings to it, what would have made a film of Queer come to life would have been a recreation of the raucous, raunchy world of late Forties Mexico City, which might have been impossible to do, but anyway is a possibility that vanishes here because of the choice to shoot everything in the studios of Cineciittà.

The city must have had some of the same qualities, wide open, drug-friendly, extralegal, that drew Burroughs later on to Tangiers. It is obvious in the film that the backgrounds are not real, just painted props. As for the warmth of Daniel Craig, it goes so strongly against everything one has ever known of William Burroughs, how can it be suitable?

There is understandably much praise for Daniel Craig's performance. He makes the otherwise rather thin scenes watchable (Starkey too brings warmth - again too much, becuse the whole point is that he is a cold fish, a cock teaser). But if fidelity to the novel source is any concern , it's worth an immediate shout-out first off to Cronenberg's over 30-year-old but still very watchable Naked Lunch, a witty and creditable effort to film the unfilmable and what is by far Burroughs' masterpiece, by comparison with which Queer is a drab apprenticeship piece, a warmup worth our attention chiefly because of what Burroughs became later with the publication, through the crucial help of Allen Ginsberg and others, of his radical masterpiece, Naked Lunch.

If he were seeking an adaptation true to the text, Guadagnino might seem to be breaking a butterfly (or a drab moth) upon a wheel. It's worth remembering that in Cronenberg's bold 1991 film adaptation of Naked Lunch William Lee is played by the blandly neutral Peter Weller, and that might be closer to the character and the fledgling Burroughs himself than the overwhelming Craig. But that would not work, or Guadagnino and his writer Justin Kuritzkes thought it wouldn't, because this story is about William Lee, whereas in Naked Lunch he is just a reflector. See Owen Gleiberman's excellent and favorable Variety review, which makes clear that Guadagnino makes this film better and deeper than the book, as well he might, while also showing more of both strength and vulnerability in Burroughs than he ever revealed in Queer or in his wryly emphatic later public persona as what Gleiberman calls a "punk icon in the ’80s." See also Fionnuala Halligan's dry and knowing review in Screen Daily, which concludes that Guadagnino's Queer "has all the provocation but none of the haunting power that [Cronenberg's] Naked Lunch still holds, almost 35 years later." Her math is more generous than mine, but otherwise we're in agreement.

Halligan suggests that shooting the film not in Mexico but in the closed studios of Cinecittà achieves an interesting and resonant effect but also an artificiality that will help contribute to its feeling alienating to today's LGBTQ+ audience. Despite the importance of its author, one of the key figures and a kind of elder doyen of the Beat era, Queer is a peripheral work, its choice by Guadagnino a somewhat odd one. (Mind you, in Queer Burroughs already has his "routines" and all his ideas about hypnotism, mind control, especially telepathy - hence the yage; but within the framework of a relatively conventional novel.)

The novel is unfinished. It is not, like this film, in two distinct parts and multiple chapters. In the novel Lee persuades Allerton to accompany him on a trip south in search of yage, also known as ayajuasca, botanical name Banisteriopsis caapi, the psychedelic plant, and agree to periodic sex. But that is not in the book occasion for a psychedelic writing episode, as the film shifts in cinematic style. Most of all, there is no special coming together in the novel, because there can't be, because in the frustrating real life experience Burroughs was trying to expiate there wasn't one. This isn't Guadagnino at his best and can only be recommended to completists.

Currently there is a free online PDF text of Burroughs' Queer here. Recommended particularly for Burroughs' 1985 introduction, describing Mexico City, explaining why he was there, and declaring that his fatal shooting of his wife was what turned him into a writer. If Guadagnino and Justin Kuritzkes had woven more external factual details about Burroughs into the film as Cronenberg does into his film Naked Lunch, that would have added color and interest.

Queer, 151 mins,, debuted Sept. 3, 2024 at Venice, showing also at Toronto, Mill Valley, and the NYFF. The film will be released (NYC) Oct. 6, 2024. General AMC release Nov. 27. Metacritic rating: 7̶5̶%̶. Now 7̶4̶%̶ (10/9/24). Now 72% (12/20/24)/

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.