Genre: Period Drama
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey
Release Date: December 13th, 2024
Platform: Theater
Rating: 2.5/5
By Stephen Lackey
“Auteur Luca Guadagnino films the unfilmable with his new film Queer”
QUEER is the latest film from auteur Luca Guadagnino. The film is based on an unfinished novel by William S. Burrows. Burrows was an eclectic writer whose works were one part narrative, one part spoken word poetry, and often one part body horror. In the cinema world, his most famous adaptation is Naked Lunch directed by David Rosenberg. Queer brings together Luca’s artistic vision with Burrows off kilter pros, but does it work?
QUEER is a semi-autobiographical with Daniel Craig playing William Lee, a stand in for Burrows. Lee is living a solitary life in a small American community in 1950’s Mexico City. He drinks, he smokes, and he has sex with men either by meeting them in bars or by hiring them. Things change for him when he meets Allerton, played by Drew Starkey. Lee is trying to discover himself through a relationship with Allerton, but Allerton is never clear on whether he actually wants this relationship. Allerton is sometimes disgusted by Lee’s advances and other times he’s intimate and invested. There is some semblance of realness in that confusion and that may be the only thing to truly hold on to throughout the film’s runtime.
QUEER is meditative and meandering and spends most of its runtime doing really mothing. We spend long moments just smoking or drinking or both and nothing is happening. These moments are so reminiscent of French New Wave Cinema where it’s more about a cool shot than any depth. Lee is surely representing Burrow’s struggle to be the person he wants to be within a world he feels doesn’t accept him, and that’s interesting but there’s just not enough actual story to latch on to. Literally nothing happens for half of the film’s runtime. There is a side story about a drug that Lee wants to experience, but it feels tacked on and has no deep relevance or resonance. What the side story does do is give us a third act that visually and narratively feels disconnected from the rest of the film. That third act also introduces some laughably bad CGI to the film.
QUEER has some moments of brilliance; Daniel Craig’s performance is superlative, there are moments of beauty in the cinematography, and Jason Schwartzman sometimes brings some levity to the proceedings. More often though there’s no depth to the characters, the cinematography reads flat and “sound studio”, and the story feels incomplete. If you enjoyed Call Me by Your Name you may like this one because it’s reminiscent of that film. Even though much of the team from Challengers came together for this film it doesn’t have the same strong storytelling backbone that Challengers had. Luca has released three films this year in Challengers, Kinds of Kindness, and now Queer. Based on Queer, maybe he needs to take more time to develop his scripts and not be in such a rush to get behind the camera. Still though, two out of three isn’t bad. QUEER sadly, isn’t one of Luca’s films that will be talked about six months from now.
