Much like there was a lot of chatter about the sex in Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name” seven years ago, there has been a lot of talk about the sex in his new film “Queer” – but for very different reasons.
If you’ll come back with me to 2017, you might remember some discussion about Guadagnino’s decision to turn away from the climactic moment between Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer), moving instead to a shot of the view from Elio’s bedroom window – a decision that some viewers saw as Guadagnino pulling his punches. If you were one of those people, you have no need to worry about that with “Queer.” The love scenes are there in full force, although Guadagnino does intersperse those scenes with multiple shots of window and balcony views – a troll from a director if I’ve ever seen one.
If anything, “Queer,” based on the William S. Burroughs novella of the same name, is the work of a director who seems acutely aware of the way he and his work are perceived – the older, weirder, smellier cousin of something like “Call My By Your Name,” still beautifully rendered but with darkness rearing its ugly head. Repressed desire, desperation for human connection, viscous cycles that repeat themselves again and again – these are all themes that appear in both works. But in “Queer,” Guadagnino approaches them through a more mature, experimental lens. It’s a film that, while sometimes baffling, is endlessly fascinating in its construction, with two perfectly pitched performances at its center.
“Queer” follows William Lee (Daniel Craig), an American expat living in Mexico City in the 1950s. He spends his days getting absolutely loaded on alcohol, heroin, and whatever else he can find, trolling bars for younger men to take home and having varying levels of success in each endeavor. When he comes across Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), he becomes obsessed with the young man, although the sentiment might not be returned.
The first thing you need to know about Lee is he’s a lot less cool than he purports to be. That’s apparent in Justin Kuritzkes’ script, and Guadagnino points this out to us visually time and time again. There are a number of moments where Lee struts down the streets in slow motion, a song playing over his long, purposeful strides (the best of these needledrops is the first – Nirvana’s “Come As You Are”). He’s a regular Humphrey Bogart, bathed in dark blue as he sashays down the street past bar after bar, the brim of his hat pulled low over his face.
Most of these hyperstylized moments, however, end rather abruptly, usually with Lee making a bit of a fool of himself. The Nirvana moment comes to a halt when Lee happens upon a cockfight and Eugene appears to him for the first time. The power balance of the scene shifts immediately, Lee openly agog by the sight of Eugene – and we are too. You suddenly realize that this is the coolest guy in the room, not Lee.
It’s an impressive feat of performance from Craig. Take this with a grain of salt – he still looks like Daniel Craig – but it’s fascinating to watch an actor with that much natural swagger turn that confidence into something phony. Simply put, Lee is always trying too hard. The next time he sees Eugene after their first brush, he delivers a pompous, ultimately pathetic, little bow in the middle of a dingy bar. All of Lee’s flourishes feel forced, so intensely enamored with Eugene it’s a little bit embarrassing. Later in the film, Lee and Eugene sit side by side on couch reading, Lee positively vibrating with anticipation, just waiting for enough time to pass where it’s acceptable to make a move. He clumsily scooches over to Eugene, who – lazing like a femme fatale, barely holding onto his tumbler of whiskey – drawls, “Well, if you insist.”
Eugene is a tough nut to crack, and Starkey, icy and enigmatic, is shot in such a way he almost looks like he’s carved from marble. The untouchable nature of Eugene becomes part of Lee’s obsession. To the audience, and even to Lee most of the time, it is pretty clear that Eugene is not particularly interested in Lee beyond the occasional tumble in the sack. So why does he keep coming back? Why, when Lee asks Eugene to come on a trip with him to South America, does he say yes? Sure, there’s a little bit of a transaction involved, but it doesn’t seem like nearly enough to make this all worth it .
Lee has these questions too, and throughout the film he becomes obsessed with yagé (you might know it as ayahuasca), convinced that it could give him telepathic powers – something he could use to slip into Eugene’s mind and see if he could find a modicum of understanding of another person, but also himself. There’s a refrain that both Lee and Eugene say in the film – “I’m not queer, I’m disembodied.” (The phrase is prevalent in Burroughs’ journals, reflecting his unease with the idea of his own queerness). This idea comes to fruition in the film’s trippy third act, where Lee and Eugene travel to Ecuador to meet with Dr. Cotter (Lesley Manville, as an ayahuasca-obsessed Indiana Jones type) and try yagé for themselves.
Lee’s own hangups about his queerness are prevalent throughout the film. At one point, he delivers an impassioned speech to Eugene about how when he was younger, he contemplated killing himself, but through the sage advice of an “old queen” named Bobo, decided living would do more to quell the bigotry and ignorance than dying could (For his part, Eugene seems completely bored by this story, chomping away at his dinner and licking his fingertips with disinterest). Lee’s addictions manifested when he was younger as a way for him to shield himself from his own fears and insecurities, but now that he’s older, reaching back into the past and further into himself is something that appeals to him. But with Eugene along for the ride, Lee inadvertently pushes the younger man too far. We come to realize that Eugene’s standoffishness might be the product of the same things that Lee suffers from – he just has different ways of protecting himself.
Stylistically, “Queer” is a hodge podge of references, from Guadagnino’s own films to a straight up “2001: A Space Odyssey” type journey toward the film’s end. At the beginning of their relationship, Lee will often reach out toward Eugene with a phantom hand, a special effect that feels straight out of a Luis Buñuel film. Lee’s desperation to know what Eugene is thinking, to know if they are cut from the same cloth or not, culminates in a sensual dance that dips into body horror and surrealism in equal measure – the dangers of losing yourself in another person before you totally understand your own self fully realized, the cycle complete.
With “Queer,” Guadagnino seems to have very little regard for the “rules,” as they were, stylistic and tonal shifts waiting around every corner. Perhaps some of his choices might make more sense if you have a better understanding of Burroughs and his life, but understanding in a logical sense doesn’t seem to be what Guadagnino is after. Much like Lee’s search for understanding, perhaps it’s futile to try.
