An adaptation of a William Burroughs novel of the same name, one of the things Queer does is explore identity politics in a refreshing way, tacitly asking a question about the nature of people. Does doing homosexual things make you a homosexual?
In the red corner Bill Lee (Daniel Craig), a died-in-the-wool ageing queer hiding out in Mexico City in 1950, where he lives the life of the dissolute bohemian expat on his American dollars, and flits from one seedy gay bar to another, to chitchat and drink, but mostly drink, and then weave home where a spoon and a syringe await.
In the blue corner Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), recently out of US military service, female friend always on his arm. He’s a handsome dude young enough and fit enough to catch Bill’s eye, and does.
Using guile, charm, smarts and slugs of booze, Bill courts the lean and long Eugene, who eventually either yields to his inner homosexual or puts out to help a new friend in need. From here a joust. No not that sort of joust. One of wills, between the older man, who wants Eugene entirely, and the younger man, who keeps Bill at arm’s length.
The adaptation is by Justin Kuritzkes and the director is Luca Guadagnino, who together made Challengers only a few months earlier and, blow me if it isn’t pretty much the same story. Powerplay, desire, the upper hand gained by the one who is coolest, the fascination coming from watching the player with the weakest hand trying to make the most of it. In this case Bill spends an inordinate amount of time trying to get Eugene to go on a journey with him to the back of beyond, so they can take yage (another name for ayahuasca) and Bill can push his advantage in an unfamiliar setting.
This they eventually do, at which point Lesley Manville’s cackling, yage-dispensing Dr Cotter arrives on the scene and the film stops being languid and shifts into a chug.
Though plot, to a large extent, is not what this film is about. Visually it’s an update of the French poetic realist movie of the 1930s. The drama is urgent but the visuals aren’t. Nothing is quite real. It’s amplified slightly, then softened and shaken. Every shabby hotel is styled to within an inch of its boho life, every extra on the street looks like a new arrival from central casting, every car like it’s come out of storage in LA just five minutes before.
Guadagnino has said the film is a homage of sorts to Powell and Pressburger, of The Red Shoes era – ie realism not even vaguely part of the proposition. I think when he said Powell and Pressburger maybe he really meant Jean Vigo, Marcel Carné and Jean Renoir (one of his films is briefly glimpsed at one point) but was offering names that were less obviously alienating to an anglophone audience.
At another level it’s a lyrical billet doux to an idea of bohemianism – the typewriter, the packet of Camel cigarettes, the drugs, the garret – which no longer has the power it once had. Of Beat poets like William Burroughs, but also Kerouac and co. Of Malcolm Lowry’s boho-at-bay novel Under the Volcano. Of the days when there was a counter-culture and a fully functioning avant-garde. When drinking yourself to death was heroic, not sad.
As a moodboard it’s fantastic, as a drama a bit less so. Craig is back in the sort of territory he used to be in before James Bond whisked him away. Sidelined people and misfits were his thing then, and Bill Lee slots in alongside the likes of George Dyer, the lover of painter Francis Bacon in John Maybury’s brilliant Love Is the Devil. Or Darren, the handyman who becomes the lover of an older woman in The Mother, Roger Michell and Hanif Kureishi’s fabulous run at the subject of sex/power dynamics.
While this is a reason to rejoice, Craig is in fact a bit mannered, as if he hasn’t quite shaken off tics learnt in Logan Lucky or the Knives Out movies. Starkey is unwilling to play along so comes across slightly as the shrinking violet rather than the knowing operator. Best thing in it – and entirely revelatory – is Jason Schwartzman as one of the many “screaming fags” who hang out with Bill in Mexico City, where much time is spent parsing queerness – there’s not much lower you can go than “screaming fag”.
Guadagnino saves the best, and moodiest, for last, when Bill and Eugene finally go on their yage trip together, which is done as expressive dance meets lion masks meets mind melds meets nudity – not entirely helpful as a description, I know. Powell and Pressburger updated, maybe? A lot of people struggle to get this side of William Burroughs onto the screen and one of the small triumphs of this very mixed movie is that Guadagnino has managed it.
Queer – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2025
