Queer (Itália e EUA, 2024)
Original title: Queer
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Writer/Screenplay: Justin Kuritzkes, based on a book by William S. Burroughs
Main cast: Daniel Craig, Lesley Manville, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, David Lowery, Henrique Zada, Colin Williams and Lisandro Alonso
Runtime: 135 minutes (2°15’)
Luca Guadagnino is aligned with the directors who are seeking to bring desire back to the screen. And if in his acclaimed Challengers (2024) he plays with desire through a young and sensual love triangle, Queer could be the sad side of the same coin. Part love triangle and part reflection on the difficult life of homosexuals in the middle of the last century, the work is a dive into Burroughs’ book to talk about loneliness.
William Lee (Daniel Craig) is an American expatriate living in Mexico and is basically concerned with two things: using drugs and having casual encounters with handsome men. But when he meets Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), an obsession with the boy begins, complicated by the fact that he has his own dilemmas regarding his sexuality. And, in addition, Lee begins a plan to travel through South America in search of a magical plant, yagé (better known to Brazilians as Ayahuasca).
If the film begins with a representation of the stereotypical daily life of Americans who don’t even bother to learn the local language to live in another country, it gradually takes on a much more reflective character of the characters’ inner selves. It shifts from a realistic tone to a fantasy one in a way that is intrinsically linked to the story, in a change that most critics seemed to consider very sudden, but which is constructed both in the plot and in the visuals.
The plot is constructed in a cyclical manner, between moments of passion and fights between the couple and moments in which the cycle of drug use is heavier or Lee is in withdrawal. And even though there’s some inspiration from a book, this is where the audiovisual adaptation ends up failing: because its translation to the screen leads to a tiring sensation that goes beyond what’s generated by the scenes and makes the entire film somewhat tiresome. When it starts to come to an end, there’s more than one scene in which we get the feeling that the movie could have stopped there.
The casting was very fortuitous. Daniel Craig, who played one of the most heteronormative characters in cinema, James Bond, playing an openly gay character at a time when this was considered highly subversive, is able to use his career to bring an extra-screen narrative element. Unfortunately, even in 2024, we still have people who are shocked by more sensual sex scenes between people of the same gender, and the phenomenon seen in Venice of people leaving the theater was also seen in Toronto. I still don’t understand a person who chooses to go to the movies, buys a ticket, sees its not-so-dubious title and still gets shocked.
One of the most beautiful moments in the film is the visual interpretation that Guadagnino creates of the use of Ayahuasca to portray the connection and lack of connection between the couple. Even more interesting was that an audience member asked the director a question calling it a body horror moment, to which the director responded by saying that he considers that a romantic moment.
As a personal project of the director, there are several ideas that seem to have fermented in his head for many years and that failed to find the same enthusiasm and passion from the audience. Still, it is an unmissable LGBTQIA+ film that should be enjoyed on the big screen.
Translated by: Renata Torres
