Gay Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, best known for his gay coming-of-age romance, "Call Me by Your Name," has hit his groove. His sexy tennis love triangle film "Challengers" was a box office and critical smash this spring.
And now his period phantasmagorical kaleidoscopic rumination on gay obsessive desire, A 24's "Queer," based on Beat-era author William Burroughs' 1985 novella (actually written between 1951 and 1953), has just been released.
Guadagnino is one of the most innovative and gutsy directors working today. "Call Me's" first love sweetness in a semi-traditional romance has been replaced with "Queer's" desperate purposelessness, chasing after fleeting connections. Only the pain of unrequited love links these two wildly dissimilar movies.
Pick-up tricks
Dissipated William Lee (Daniel Craig), fleeing a drug arrest in the U.S., makes a home in seamy Mexico City in the early 1950s. Coming from a wealthy family, he tries to write but spends most of his time barhopping to pick up younger men for sex. He's surrounded by other prowling gay men, including drinking confidante Frank (a terrific Jason Schwartzman), a stand-in parody for Allen Ginsberg. His sexual conquests wind up robbing him in what is the film's running joke.
Lee is an alcoholic, chain-smoking, heroin drug addict, hanging out at a gay bar, Ship Ahoy. He goes from soiled white linen suit, fedora-wearing faded bon vivant to sleazy pick-up operator, drifting aimlessly between one-night stands (one of whom is gay singer/song-writer Omar Apollo in a full-frontal nude cameo). He believes being queer is a guilt-ridden compulsive curse.
Lee meets the much younger, golden-haired, recently discharged Navy man — now unemployed — Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) who wears owlish glasses, with whom Lee's instantly smitten. Lee isn't sure if Gene is gay, as he spends most of his time with fiery red-haired Joan, with whom he plays chess.
Lee continually attempts to seduce Gene almost in a predatory fashion. They land in bed and have explicit graphic sex (probably to answer critics that Guadagnino was too prudish in the bedroom scenes for "Call Me").
Gene remains aloof despite Lee's total infatuation and can't get enough of him. Lee convinces Gene to accompany him for an all-expenses-paid trip (plus a promise to have sex with him twice a week) into the Ecuadoran rainforest to track down a psychedelic drug called yage (short for ayahuasca).
Yage supposedly makes its users telepathic and was being sought by Russia for mind control purposes. But Lee really wants to learn what Gene's feelings are for him. Is he using him for sex favors or money? Is he really indifferent or just wanting to maintain his independence?
Quasi-unhinged
They encounter the quasi-unhinged but perceptive American gun-toting scientist Dr. Cotter (an unrecognizable Lesley Manville) in a jungle hideout guarded by a huge yellow viper snake. She warns him the drug is "a mirror and when you look in it, you might not like what you see." Lee then enters into the heart of darkness as he levitates out of his body and unites with Gene's nude body.
The second half seems completely different film from its first counterpart, due to its fantastic tone. Is it a mind-altering trip, a drug high or withdrawal, a travel adventure wrapped around an identity crisis, a psychedelic fantasy gone awry, or a dream metamorphosizing into a nightmare with its hallucinatory audiovisual overload?
Your interpretation is as plausible as mine, since it's that experimental-type movie which doesn't care if you understand it or not. It feels as if David Lynch or David Cronenberg during their 1980s prime, could've directed the movie's rambling, incoherent moments. The film seeks to expand both your consciousness and senses with its use of surrealism and anachronistic songs (i.e. two Nirvana covers, one by Sinead O'Connor), shot not in Mexico, but Rome's Cinecitta studios, adding to its dislocation aura.
The film isn't really about drugs or hookups, but how people deal with loneliness at a time when gay men were stigmatized, their sex deemed illegal. Lee isn't afraid to be exactly who he is, but he's very depressed about it. Where does infatuation end and exploitation begin?
The movie is grim as it details someone who's in deep emotional pain and unafraid to ex-press raw feelings. Lee tries in vain to secure something he knows he can never fully possess, resulting in a broken heart. Love may be a much harder addiction to kick than heroin.
Suave to sweaty
Craig delivers a no-holds-barred mesmerizing performance of a lifetime. He seems to be a shoo-in for a Best Actor Oscar nomination. The straight 'James Bond' actor has played gay men several times before, notably as painter Francis Bacon's criminal lover in "Love Is the Devil" and as the bisexual sleuth in the "Knives Out" franchise. But here he switches believably from suave to sweaty wreck or funny to terrifying on a dime, revealing a deep sadness and inner paralysis at the core of Lee.
Craig's Lee is charismatic, magnetic, and a scene-chewer extraordinaire, which unfortunately tends to overshadow Starkey's Gene. Starkey is fine and gorgeous in the way of 1970s Calvin Klein models, but not much else is revealed about this enigmatic character.
The blame may lie with screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes ("Champions"), but we can only speculate how a young gay actor might've interpreted Gene or perhaps suggested some clarifying script changes. It's high time that if there are two major gay roles in a film, one of them should be played by a gay novice of which there are now plenty.
Manville is incredible in a flabbergasting chameleon transformation, a likely Best Supporting Actress nominee, for her backwoods dwelling "Beverly Hillbillies" Granny-type researcher, both wise and bat shit crazy.
While "Queer" won't appeal to every taste, disappointing or frustrating some viewers, it has all the makings of a cult classic. One can only applaud Guadagnino's daring risk-taking and uncompromising resolve to uphold Burrough's disturbing vision. "Queer" is audacious, odd, meandering, prickly, overlong, and heartbreaking, shaking LGTBQ audiences to their core, reminding us of our need for intimacy, that we're not, we mustn't be, alone.
'Queer' opens Dec. 5 at AMC Kabuki 8 and Alamo Drafthouse Cinema New Mission.
www.a24films.com
Never miss a story! Keep up to date on the latest news, arts, politics, entertainment, and nightlife.
Sign up for the Bay Area Reporter's free weekday email newsletter. You'll receive our newsletters and special offers from our community partners.
Support California's largest LGBTQ newsroom. Your one-time, monthly, or annual contribution advocates for LGBTQ communities. Amplify a trusted voice providing news, information, and cultural coverage to all members of our community, regardless of their ability to pay -- Donate today!