‘Queer’: Venice Review

Dir. Luca Guadagnino. Italy. 2024. 135mins

When ’Queer’ was written – and even when it was published, 35 years later, still unfinished – that term was a nasty pejorative. Times may have changed, but no gender should expect to find this strange William S. Burroughs adaptation by Luca Guadagnino in any way comfortable. The oddness extends in all directions: Luca Guadagnino’s choice to adapt the material in the first place; the decision to shoot most of it on a soundstage and backlot in Cinecitta Studios in Rome and not really disguise that fact; lead actor Daniel Craig’s post-Bond volte-face in playing an alcoholic, heroin-addict gay man cruising around Mexico City, lusting after young flesh. It is, indeed, queer.

All the provocation but none of the haunting power

A24’s decision to pick up Queer in advance of its Venice, Telluride and TIFF outings is a clear play to its ‘edgy’ fanbase, and this 135-minute odyssey – which extends to a hearts-of-darkness bad-trip voyage into the jungle in search of enlightenment – will court the more adventurous end of the art market. It is, though, unlikely to be wholly embraced by the LGBTQI+ audience: there’s a determined lack of authenticity to the affair, and that’s apart from the 1950s-style ‘Mexican’ backlots. Expect it to play more like Guadagnino’s 2022 Bones And All than his recent hit Challengers. Craig, whose performance can’t help but recall Peter Weller in the superior Naked Lunch (they are both playing versions of Burroughs and the source materials are connected) may score acting nominations for a role well played, although that won’t come without its own controversy.

Burroughs dashed off ’Queer’ in the aftermath of having killed his partner Joan Vollmer; it is a sequel of sorts to ‘Junkie’, which established him as a Beat success. Written between 1951 and 53, it centres around his alter ego, an ageing boozehound called William Lee, who cruises the expat gay bars of Mexico City looking for sex and companionship, but mainly oblivion, which he also also chases by injecting heroin. He encounters the coolly self-possessed Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), who may or may not be homosexual (like Burroughs himself, although there seems no doubt about Lee’s sexual preferences). They strike up a relationship of sorts, but Allerton plays it very cool and the shambling Lee becomes more and more obsessed.

Where Queer excels is in the push-and-pull of the relationship between Lee and Allerton, played beautifully by both actors: Craig’s sweaty messiness playing off against Starkey’s unpredictable indifference. There’s something too, about those studio backlots which sets off this very 1950s drama to perfection. Jason Schwartzman plays Lee’s feckless friend Joe with warmth and humour, and Queer really comes alive amid the artifice, Lee crashing around, unpleasantly sympathetic. This first half of the film exhibits the kind of daring that has made Guadagnino the success that he is. Who else would attempt this? It is, however, a film of two halves.

Lee, like Burroughs himself, is obsessed with the idea of finding the psychedelic drug ‘yage’, also known as ayahuasca. He decides to undertake an expedition down south to achieve it, and makes a complicated arrangement with Allerton to accompany him (part paid, sex restricted to certain days). Soon, however, Allerton comes to know first-hand just how addicted Lee is to the poppy. And who’s at the end of their yage rainbow? Lesley Manville, going full gonzo as scientist Dr Cotter who experiments with the drug herself, and agrees to administer it to the odd couple who have suddenly dropped in on her jungle hideaway. 

Whatever your stance may be on mind-altering drugs, it’s generally accepted that watching other people take them is boring. Staring in the void of two actors pretending to take ayahuasca – and be gay – while Manville hams it up like someone who escaped from the Deliverance set; well, that’s a trip that too many will decide is not worth taking. Queer is an adaptation of an unfinished book, which concludes in a way that may be appropriate to the source material, but it’s all just far too ripe.

J W Anderson, returning from Challengers, supplies the costumes, so it’s no surprise to see the prolific and talented Irish designer having fun with the Burroughs man-in-the-hat iconography – and the expat-in-the-tropics linen suit. As DoP, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom works within some artificial restrictions to create something unexpectedly redolent, mostly in the first half. Likewise for production designer Stefano Basil, who excels in Mexico but finds it hard to create a credible jungle in Rome, the original concrete jungle of the Emperors.

For a long time, traumatised by that period of his personal life — he did come off heroin in Mexico and was convicted of his partner’s homicide in absentia – Burroughs did not consider Queer to be something he wanted to publish, or even revisit. Steve Buscemi had a Queer project for a long time, but it never pushed through either. Only someone like Guadagnino, riding high on deep wallets, or maybe even driving drunk at someone else’s wheel, has the power to adapt this odd book. For a Burroughs adaptation, it has all the provocation but none of the haunting power that Naked Lunch still holds, almost 35 years later.