Film Review: Queer – The Pride LA

By Dolores Quintana

Luca Guadagnino, the Italian auteur director of Call Me By Your Name, Challengers, Suspiria (2018), and the highly underrated Bones and All has finally created the film that has been a passion project for him for his entire career. The film is based on William S. Burroughs’ unfinished novel of the same name which is a book that left a great impression on him as a teenager. He was so intent on making it into a film that he began to write an adaptation of the book when he was 21 years old, seven years before he made his feature film debut

Queer is a passionate work of art on the mysterious, mystifying, and all-powerful nature of love.  

This is the synopsis: 1950. William Lee, an American expat in Mexico City, spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community. His encounter with Eugene Allerton, an expat former soldier, new to the city, shows him, for the first time, that it might be finally possible to establish an intimate connection with somebody.

The film stars Daniel Craig, as William Lee aka William S. Burroughs’ literary alter ego, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Henrique Zaga, Lesley Manville, and David Lowery, the director of The Green Knight. 

The film is enthralling and is electrified by the languorous sensuality of a frustrated love. William Lee is a man with a wounded need. While it is easy for him to find sex, what he really wants is love, which is much harder to find. He is struck by the arrival of Eugene Allerton, an enigmatic former soldier that Lee at once becomes mesmerized by. 

The two characters are at odds in a way all too common in love affairs. One person is ready for an emotional connection and the other is not. What is worse than being rejected outright by a potential lover? Perhaps it is getting what you want, having a passionate sexual connection, and then finding out that the feeling may not be fully reciprocated. The most troubling thing about this connection is that mystery. Are they there with you? 

The script was adapted from the Burroughs’ novel by Justin Kuritzkes, who wrote the spec script that became the movie Challengers and was his first feature screenplay. There is a depth of understanding in the film that comes from the work of all of the craftspeople in the cast and crew. Sayombhu Mudkeeprom, the cinematographer of Challengers and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, gives the film its own character through his beautifully realized work and you could never guess that Queer was filmed entirely on the Cinecetta lot. The composers are the team of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who most ably give the film what Guadagnino needs it to have. 

Craig wears his weary and troubled heart pinned to his chest and only dons his armor when he is not with Allerton. Drew Starkey is a dark star, a center of glamour that has no glimmer of his internal life. He is a tractor beam of a man that reflects no light of warmth. The other actors are characters, in the best sense of the word, interesting and fully developed human beings, three-dimensional and amusing.

Queer is another spectacular achievement for Guadagnino. It is less idiosyncratic than some of his other films but has his stamp of artistry all over it. It is 100% Luca Guadagnino, which is the greatest compliment that you can give to an artist. He has taken a book that he loves and interpreted it as he sees it and succeeds wildly. It has cinematic magic. A magnificent obsession about a magnificent obsession. It is everything that Burroughs and the book deserve.