Director – Luca Guadagnino – 2024 – Italy, US – Cert. 18 – 135m
*****
A journey through the gay fleshpots of Mexico City leading, through illness, to a deeper jungle wherein can be found a drug that will enhance telepathy – challenging William Burroughs adaptation with Daniel Craig & Lesley Manville is out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 13th
Bookended with a prologue and an episode, this is a narrative split into three separate sections or chapters. In the first, set in Mexico City, fortysomething Bill Lee (Daniel Craig) spends his days and nights drinking in bars like Ship Ahoy frequented by (mostly younger male) US ex-pats. He talks with friends such as Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman), he watches newcomers, he attempts, sometimes successfully, to pick some up. He is taken with Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), and the pair embark on an intense physical relationship. Lee persuades Eugene to accompany him to South America, with no stipulation other than Eugene “be nice” to him a couple of times a week.
In the second, on the trip Bill goes down with a nasty case of the chills. In the third, following his eventual recovery, he asks around about a drug called Yaga he understands can facilitate telepathy, the pair trekking deep into the jungle to find biologist Dr. Cotter (Lesley Manville) who is researching the drug and, Lee believes, can supply him with it.
“Bill Lee” is the pseudonym, under which Burroughs wrote, and often appeared as the central protagonist in his writings, a sort of literary alter-ego. In Junkie (1953), Lee is a heroin addict; in Naked Lunch (1959), later turned into a film by David Cronenberg (1991), his life is examined as a series of routines. He is older and more seasoned in Queer (1951-53, published 1985), and longing for human connection.
Actor Daniel Craig has found himself playing the same character in various film series, most obviously James Bond in the five most recent moviesculminating in No Time To Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021) but also amateur sleuth Benoid Blanc in Knives Out (2019) and Glass Onion (Rian Johnson, 2019 & 2022), and now Bill Lee, the character having previously been portrayed by Peter Weller in Cronenberg’s 1991 film. As with his Bond, there’s a harshness and directness to Craig’s interpretation of Bill Lee. And before buying a ticket, audiences should know what they’re in for: there are some very physical gay sex scenes, as well as scenes of drug abuse. Not for nothing is this a BBFC 18.
It’s never stated, but the second, illness section feels like the character going Cold Turkey as he tries to come off drugs. There remains something deeply affecting about seeing Bill on one single bed, wrapped in a blanket and shivering, ask to be joined by Eugene, wearing one or maybe two layers of Summer clothing, and completely healthy, and Bill being comforted as the latter snuggles up to him.
When they reach Dr. Cotter’s hut somewhere in the deepest jungle, a snake flies terrifyingly towards them out of the dark interior. She is quite cavalier about the whole thing, often waving a pistol or a rifle around in the direction of any guests present. She is indeed able to supply the drug, which is to be found growing everywhere in the immediate location, but warns that, rather than get users high, its effects may be very different. There are unexpected moments of extreme body horror, but unlike those in The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024) which can be easily dismissed as hack exercises in identikit Cronenberg, the prosthetics (or are they CG?) don’t feel like one director trying to ape another so much as someone searching to forge their own filmic language to articulate the element they are attempting to explore. As a result, such moments here are both more resonant and more deeply shocking.
Despite their both being over thirty years apart, the new film feels like a companion piece to Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, made by another director whose vision is very much his own. You certainly don’t need to have read the book or seen the earlier film, though: Queer is very much a self-contained work that works on its own, and on its own terms. If Craig intended to tell the world that his post-Bond movies will be very different, it’s hard to think of a film more suited to conveying that message. The extreme nature of the film most definitely means it isn’t for anyone, but for those able to deal with such material; it’s both challenging and exhilarating. He gives a performance that is completely out there; watching the film is to feel like you’ve just landed on another planet. Not surprisingly, Manville’s performance, when she appears towards the end, gives him a serious run for his money. A deeply affecting movie.
Queer is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, December 13th.
Trailer: