Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Henrique Zaga, Lesley Manville
Screenplay: Justin Kuritzkes
137 mins. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, strong drug content, language and brief violence.

It’s a difficult task to adapt William S. Burroughs, and even when accomplished, the finished product can struggle to find an audience. So was the case with David Cronenberg’s terrific Naked Lunch, and I believe that will be the case with Queer, based on the second of Burroughs’s novels and brought to the screen by Luca Guadagnino (Challengers), a perfect filmmaker to play in the writer’s world who has delivered a special movie, one that feels like an expertly crafted drug trip.

William Lee (Daniel Craig, Knives Out) is an American expat living in Mexico City. William’s an addict, of drugs and much more, who has discovered a new attractive young man named Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey, Love, Simon) and has developed an obsession over understanding his enigmatic persona. As William and Eugene circle each other in Mexico City and beyond, William’s wanting for a human connection and his addictions become an explosive concoction.

Guadagnino has effectively made a film that recreated the feeling of drug use through the use of seemingly intentional unreality. While I didn’t feel the effects of his filmmaking in the individual moment, Queer created a hazy feeling when the end credits began that deeply affected me. William Lee is a fascinating lead character, a stand-in for Burroughs, who tends to use human connection in the same way he uses heroin. He craves the next hit, the next escape, and only when Eugene enters the picture does his desire completely envelope another person. He’s also a sad and sorry person who just wants Eugene to feel the same way, spending time trying to understand why this connection doesn’t feel two-way. William is an excellently-written character who is brought to life wonderfully by Daniel Craig, who further sheds his connections with James Bond by creating an emotional obsessive with comfortable clarity.

There are a few sequences scattered throughout Queer that perfectly embody the obsession that William carries with him, as Guadagnino layers in a ghostly mirage of Craig who executes all of his desires toward Eugene. They sit together in a movie theater, and William’s ghostly visage strokes Eugene’s hair and face. It’s a devastating visual motif that lingers far longer than the run time. Guadagnino brings a number of other horror-adjacent ideas to Queer, likely from his time with the Suspiria remake and Bones and All, including ethereal and occasionally off-putting images and dreams, mixed with the fiery-hot passion on display. Combine that with some computer-generated backgrounds and a dreamy-punk score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and you have an elegant distillation of Burroughs’s work.

Now, Queer’s probably a bit too long, and it loses some steam after leaving Mexico City, but it was nevertheless engaging, disruptive, funny, and sometimes creepy, but always Burroughs. It’s not always an easy film to wrap your head around, but for those fans of the late author’s work or anyone looking for a memorable experience at the movies, Queer is a standout where its director and lead actor played on the same wavelength through the entirety.

3.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

• For my review of Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, click here.

Queer hits US theaters on December 13th.