This review was published on September 3, 2024, following the Venice Film Festival Review. Thank you for your patience, as we are republishing it now to match Queer’s theatrical release.
It’s interesting that of the two films that Luca Guadagnino has released this year, the controversial tennis love triangle is titled Challengers and the challenging William S. Burroughs adaptation is Queer. The two weren’t designed as a double feature but when the director started with that concept the second one seemed to provide a view to more of his prior works revolving around the same topic of desire. The first one was about how love, lust, and intimacy were translated into the sport they all practiced the most. Then in the latter film, which is also a Justin Kuritzkes script, yearning is what the narrative is about, a woman so desperate she ventures into the forms of Ecuador seeking a drug that will allow her to see into the mind of the man she is infatuated with. Seeing how complex the plot of Queer gets, it seems to be a weak interpretation of reality and none of its scenes holds any truth.
Guadagnino stated that he sought to make a film that would not cover unrequited love, but instead love more broadly and mutually, however, there seems to be a disconnect between the bare bones of the story that he presents on screen and the story that he trying to develop. Being Queer feels like a headcanon you sort of pity the creator of such a work’s connection to the source material while being completely removed from the relationship.
Queer is said to be based on a book Burroughs wrote in the early 50s, more specifically between 1951 and 1953 when he was on trial for the Joan Vollmer murder. Although it would take decades for it to see the light of day it was published sometime in 1985. The book stems from his relationship with Adelbert Lewis Marker who at that time had recently been in the Navy and then traveled to Mexico City where he would Encounte Burroughs. This character, as appears in the movie, is based on Eugene Allerton who was played by Drew Starkey of the Outer Banks fame and is said to have been a beautiful man based on his performance. In contrast, Burroughs’s fictional character was William Lee who was quite the opposite and was an American patriarch who was addicted to heroin, had lots of money, and had tremendous difficulty with an alcohol problem. When you see Daniel Craig play William in the movies, you will see that he wanted to have absolute control but most of the time the opposite happens whereby his hair is wet and his suit wrinkled as he was endlessly struggling around the pub for young girls to date. That is not how his character comes across which is strange given that it seems in the beginning he had a lot of hate for himself and so detesting himself, he would openly talk about being a gay man. William’s volatile and uncontrollable obsession with self-destruction was taken on by Craig who very much likely was not fond of Eugene.
In his three-piece suit, Slim looks like a model and not the other way around. Even the scorching heat which all seem to dread fails to touch him. Eugene steps into William’s fav bar and in someway into William’s heart However the man whose lasciviousness does become curt but resolved seems to always be somehow disinterested in him.
Eugene appears unbothered when William and his companion, Joe (Jason Schwartzman), brag about their sexual origins but does make a claim that he has never been to an American gay bar. He spends considerable time with William attending bars and cinema then heads out to play chess with a woman named Mary (Andra Ursuta) who seems to be a potential partner. Even after William and Eugene go into bed together Eugene still seems reluctant to remember William as a significant person around him and not just another stranger. However, If Salman, as Guadagnino emphasizes, Eugene simply isn’t the person William wants to love then why is love likely to be unrequited in Eugene’s case in the first place? William insists on presenting their connection in a way that he picks up the bill for their joint trips around South America in return for Eugene being “kind” to him serving lowly twice a week.
We can see that after what seems like the two of them having consensual sex, William seems to be a bit timid and asks his candidate ‘Do you not mind this terribly? So, he seems to be very affectionate and possessive of Eugene, but at the same time, he distances himself from this person whom he claims to be responsible for William’s mental state which is a point when William reaches the stage where he becomes so obsessed with the thought of getting to Ecuador and trying the drug that he heard yage – a drug that facilitates telepathy – until he finds a probable source to buy it from then he also mentions another name of the same drug.
Instead of undergoing therapy, some men will walk through jungles to receive ayahuasca from Lesley Manville, which is pretty remarkable. They will also be seen navigating around a vacant studio looking at Mexico City, while they listen to Nirvana, which is just one of the many anachronistic soundtrack moments. With some rather peculiar fantasy, they will want to be with a man so bad that they will be taken out of their body and then a ghostly version of them will roam about on the screen only to make the fantasy a reality. And, meet directors Lisandro Alonso, David Lowery, and Ariel Schulman for a brief moment that more or less were glorified supporting roles with probably little significance to the film as a whole. With them, they will dissolve into a euphoric vision of physical contact that is more reminiscent of body horror than it is of romance. With admiration for their creative influence, one cannot ignore the fact that over time many of the stylistic choices Guadagnino decision made during ‘Queer’ became far more integral than what the story’s worth was irrespective of over ever so attempting to put in vain. Hearing the weird speeches of Burroughs I later learned that most people are just like all of the other people I’ve heard of and when I came across ‘Queer’ it felt as though it was written by someone who is trying fit in different clothing than what would go with their sensibilities, particularly in high school. It is a rather uncomfortable mix of longing for fidelity to serve historical purposes with dissatisfaction that is not ideal for anybody except the imaginary artistic figure.
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