The Reel Review
The solitary life of a gay, heroin-addicted American ex-pat in 1950s Mexico City is thrown into disarray when he becomes infatuated with a young, newly discharged U.S. Navy serviceman. Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey star in this adaptation of the autobiographical 1985 novella by Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs.
Queer – director Luca Guadagnino’s second collaboration with screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes (Challengers) – is a bold, visually trippy, symbolism-laden fever dream that is more a character profile than anything close to resembling an actual story. Craig is mesmerizing as the charismatic and perpetually horny writer William Lee – his performance far surpassing the thin screenplay – to Starkey’s (Outer Banks, Love, Simon) more emotionally aloof (and quite possibly straight) young new acquaintance, Eugene. They decide to go on a vacation together to the jungles of South America to locate the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca, Lee hoping its alleged telepathic powers will enable him to determine whether Eugene has feelings for him.
The supporting cast includes an unrecognizable, scene-chewing Lesley Manville (Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Phantom Thread) as the gun totin’ Amazon rainforest researcher who wrangles a very fake looking python – one of many fake looking sets in the film, an equally unrecognizable Jason Schwartzman (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Asteroid City) as William’s friend who is constantly being robbed by hustlers, and Chloë Sevigny comedy impersonator Drew Droege (Chloë “Toast”) as William’s flamboyant social rival. But all of the trippy visuals and an eerily timeless score fail to make up for a way too long film that wanders so far off course in its second half as to be boring and annoying.
REEL FACTS
• Daniel Craig is the one who convinced director Luca Guadagnino to cast Drew Starkey as his character’s love interest after reviewing 300 audition tapes.
• Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain was friends with Queer author William Burroughs, even writing a song with him in 1993 titled The “Priest” They Called Him. Cobain died of a gunshot suicide the following year at the age of 27. Burroughs died in 1997 at the age of 87.
• William S. Burroughs accidentally killed his wife Joan Vollmer in Mexico City in September 1951 by shooting her in the head during a drunken game of William Tell, where she put a shot glass atop her head, daring him to shoot it off.
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