Daniel Craig delivers a bold performance in ‘Queer,’ trading Bond for Burroughs.
By Jim Verniere/Boston Movie News
What does it mean when Daniel Craig, the actor who played macho icon James Bond from 2006 (“Casino Royale”) to 2021 (“No Time to Die”), chooses to play a gay man in Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ 1985 novella “Queer?”
Well, Craig has played the gay detective Benoit Blanc in two overrated films, “Knives Out” (2019) and “Glass Onion” (2022), already, so there is that, although “Queer” has close-to-explicit, gay sex scenes that the Benoit Blanc films lack. But it is a question worth kicking around. “Queer” was a long-awaited sequel of sorts to Beat Generation giant Burroughs’ 1953 landmark novel “Junkie.”
Set in Mexico City in the early 1950s, where “Junkie” ends, “Queer” takes place after William Lee, the protagonist in both stories, has accidentally killed his wife, played in David Cronenberg’s 1991 adaptation of Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch” (1959) by the great Judy Davis.
Lee is quite the character. The action begins to the tune of Nirvana’s “All Apologies” with the famous line, “Everyone is gay.” We notice a typewriter in Lee’s digs along with handguns and contemplate the correlation between the letter and the bullet. Lee openly carries a gun wherever he goes. For the most part, his travels take him to a dive bar called Ship Ahoy, where he chain smokes Camels and downs prodigious amounts of tequila and mescal at times in the company of fellow expat writer Joe Guidry (an amusing Jason Schwartzman), who complains that some man has stolen his typewriter.
Suddenly arriving on the expats’ scene is a handsome, young American, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey, “Love, Simon”), a recently discharged Navy serviceman. Lee spots Eugene on the street and is immediately infatuated. Lee talks about his “proclivities,” which have caused him great “misery and humiliation.” In an evocation of an effect in Jean Cocteau’s avant-garde dramatic romance “Orphee” (1959), someone passes through a mirror. “I’m not queer, Lee,” Eugene remarks. “I know,” Lee responds. “I’m disembodied,” Eugene adds, meaning—What?—we wonder. Lee takes Eugene to his flat, where he never takes tricks. Lee falls head over heels. For Eugene, it’s more like a fling.
The Edward Hopper-esque visuals courtesy of Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Guadagnino’s “Suspiria”) resonate but also seem odd because Hopper is so associated with U.S. locations and subjects. The film features a torrid interlude between Craig’s Lee and the gay musician Omar Apollo in his film debut, playing a young man Lee meets at a gay bar and takes to a hotel for sex. Lee talks about going to the Amazon to find a drug he believes will make users telepathic. That’s the trouble with Burroughs’ protagonists. They often sound like they are out of their minds. Drug addiction will do that (not to mention Burroughs’ “cut-up” writing style). The screen adaptation was done by Justin Kuritzkes of Guadagnino’s “Challengers” and Guadagnino and Craig’s upcoming DC adaptation “Sgt. Rock.”
Brit Craig wears dingy white linen suits and big plexiglass eyeglass frames. He also adopts a new speaking voice for “Queer,” neatly imitating Harvard grad Burroughs. Craig also makes Lee terribly ambivalent about being gay and vulnerable to those forces in the 1950s Western culture that believe homosexuality is a mental illness and a crime. Lee is the sort of tough guy expat writer that Ernest Hemingway was in post-WWI Paris. Tough guy, gay man, he’s a walking contradiction. But he owns it.
In the film’s last part, Lee and Eugene journey to the Amazon jungle searching for the drug. They find a strange-looking British botanist named Dr. Cotter (I presume), played by Lesley Manville, of all people. Cotter has “gone native” and lives in a small reed house with a local man and a pet sloth dangling from the rafters. Cotter supplies Lee and Eugene with the drug. The doors open.
At two hours and 15 minutes, the film drags at times. In addition to a score by Guadagnino regulars Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, “Queer” boasts several anachronistic rock and Spanish language tunes, including one (“Te Maldigo”) by supporting actor Apollo. The film ends with a “2001”-like leap forward to an aged, snow-white-haired Lee gazing back at us, a gleaming artifact.
‘Queer’
Rating: R, violence, profanity, very sexually suggestive scenes.
Cast: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Omar Apollo
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Writer: Jason Kuritzkes, William S. Burroughs
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Where to Watch: Coolidge Corner Theater, Landmark Kendall Square, AMC Boston Common
Grade: B+
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