Film Review — Queer: Daniel Craig shines in Luca Guadagnino’s fascinating adaptation
Drew Starkey, director Luca Guadagnino, and Daniel Craig pose for at the photocall for the film 'Queer' during the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival. Picture: AP
In Luca Guadagnino’s , Daniel Craig may still be sleeping around and drinking dry martinis — but he is James Bond no more. He shines as William S Burrough’s stand-in, William Lee, in the adaptation of the 1985 novel of the same name.
is an emotionally deceptive piece of work. What starts off as energetic and jazzy lurches to the quite melancholic, then suddenly turns very surreal and hypnotic, soon after paranoid and eventually spiritual. It’s tonal whiplash, but oddly it works.
It’s clearly a demanding role but Craig has taken it in his stride, and with spellbinding results. Lee is portrayed by Craig (accurately, by all accounts) as an obnoxious and depraved pleasure seeker with a soft side, gun toting, chain smoking and drinking his way around 1940s Mexico City and it’s all rather fascinating to watch. You can’t take your eyes off him for a moment.
Amid the schmoozing and boozing, Craig’s Lee comes across Eugene Allerton played by Drew Starkey, a young Navy man, stationed in Mexico City. Lee is immediately smitten, the new object of his desires. However, it’s clear Lee’s affection for Allerton is not reciprocated. It becomes Lee’s obsession to make this ingenue his latest conquest. He makes a fool of himself to impress Allerton without being sure if he is actually gay or not — a mystery he lavishes on. While it can be a source of humour for the audience it confirms the humanity and vulnerability within Lee. A testament, yet again, to Craig’s prodigious performance.
Unfortunately, Drew Starkey as Allerton looks a little out of his depth, oftentimes coming off an easy second best to his experienced scene partner.
The film’s enchanting exteriors are a perfect manifestation of Lee’s (and others’) constant various states of inebriation and are complementary to the unsavoury interiors of the character’s mind. One of Guadagnino’s boldest choices is to use music not of the period in the soundtrack. Verisimilitude does not seems a priority here, and to good effect with songs from Nirvana and Omar Apollo (also a cast member) fitting perfectly into Lee’s world. After all he was, as TS Eliot put it, a man out of time.
In its final chapter, the film descends into Hunter S Thompson levels of drug-fuelled craziness. See how long it will take you to spot alumni Lesley Manville, who is unrecognisable in her brief though brilliant role. This is the moment when things all get a tad absurd. An entertaining if undisciplined penultimate sequence is followed by an epilogue that snaps the audience back into a state of melancholy. Quite the ride.
