In 1950s Mexico City, an American immigrant in his late forties leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival of a young student stirs the man into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.
Content Advisory: Needles or drug addiction, Graphic sexuality or pornography
The novel by William S. Burroughs is adapted for the big screen with Queer. As a result of his drug addictions, writer William Lee (William Lee) has been living as an exile in 1950s Mexico City, frequenting the city’s gay bars and sharing tales of homosexual misadventures with his friend Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman). Lee becomes enamoured with Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a bicurious man, who joins Lee on a trip to South America to find a hallucinogenic drug called Yagé, with the help of Dr Cotter (Lesley Manville), a botanist living within the jungle.
Queer Synopsis
Queer is a darkly comic romantic drama directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All, Challengers), based on the 1985 novel of the same name written by William S. Burroughs. The film stars Daniel Craig (No Time to Die, Glass Onion) as American ex-pat William Lee, who have been living in Mexico City and partaking in casual homosexual sex and indulging in his addiction to heroin and other drugs. Lee finds himself infatuated with Eugene Allerton, played by the relatively unknown Drew Starkey, a man whose queerness he is unsure of, as Eugene is always in the presence of a woman named Mary (Andra Ursuta).
Lee becomes interested in trying out the hallucinogenic drug known as ayahuasca, or simply Yagé, which reportedly results in telepathy. Lee convinces Eugene to join him on his trip to South America, with Lee dealing with immense drug withdrawal on the way. After making his way to the shack where Dr. Cotter, played by Leslie Manville (Phantom Thread), conducts her research, both Lee and Eugene indulge in the psychedelic effects of the drug.
My Thoughts on Queer
Queer arrives just over three decades after David Cronenberg‘s 1993 film Naked Lunch, which was previously the most notable film based on the writing of William S. Burroughs. As Cronenberg incorporated some elements of the novel Queer in his adaptation of Naked Lunch, both films have some noted similarities, including following the same protagonist of William Lee, a character loosely based on Burroughs himself, and a recurring visual motif involving centipedes. Both films also reference a tragic event in the life of William S. Burroughs, which inspired his writing.
Arguably the aspect of Queer that is getting the most attention, for better or for worse, is that it features Daniel Craig playing an unmistakably homosexual character after being best known for many years playing James Bond. Indeed, Queer features multiple unflinching gay sex scenes, which in some ways come off as a response to the decidedly tamer homosexual love scenes in Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 romance Call Me By Your Name. Without a doubt, Queer is not a film for the prudish.
In some ways, Queer can be seen as a character study about what exactly being homosexual means. This includes the film being purposely vague about the true sexual orientation of Drew Starkey’s Eugene Allerton, who at times indulges in William Lee’s advances, while at other times ignoring him for his girlfriend Mary. The film even has an interesting line that is repeated in two different hallucinogenic sequences in the film, where it is stated “I’m not queer, I’m disembodied.”
It is the increasingly psychedelic nature of Queer‘s narrative that will likely make or break the film for many viewers. This includes a lengthy drug trip love scene, which wouldn’t seem out of place in the 1989 horror film Society. Then there is the epilogue of Queer, which wraps up the narrative of the film in a highly ambiguous manner. In some ways, I have to argue that Queer is a film that would be accessible to people with a passing familiarity of William S. Burroughs’ writing or at the very least has previously watched David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch. Either way, the film features a standout lead performance by Daniel Craig.
Buy the Book on Which Queer is Based
