✯✯✯½

How exactly do you start a review of a film based on a book by William S. Burroughs? As David Cronenberg’s attempt at adapting Naked Lunch would show it, that’s a loaded task in and of itself. But Luca Guadagnino isn’t opting for one of the more straightforward books in Burroughs’s catalogue with Queer, instead he’s trying to capture a feeling that might just as well be familiar for many gay audiences, especially following the popularity he’s acquired from younger viewers after Call Me by Your Name became such a massive success. This film feels like it’s set out to alienate that same audience, and for better or worse, that’s just what makes it so deeply fascinating.

Daniel Craig stars as William Lee, an American expat living in 1940’s Mexico City. Lee, functioning effectively as a stand-in for author William S. Burroughs, is a lonely man living within a group of fellow expats – often frequenting gay bars and indulging in whatever drugs are within his reach. Soon, Lee finds himself entranced by the presence of the discharged American Navy serviceman Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), with whom he wishes to take on a journey to the Amazon. This soon begins another series of drug-induced trips for Lee, as his own need for a companion ultimately ends up destroying him more from the inside – echoing William S. Burroughs’s own slow descents into drug addiction.

Adapting a novel written by an author like William S. Burroughs would also require trying to find a means of making sense out of his own drug trips, which almost seems like a near-impossible task. Luca Guadagnino and Justin Kuritzkes are trying their best to make something tangible out of such a text, which mostly works. The movie’s structure, echoing that of Burroughs’s Queer, is one that captures a sense of that loneliness that William Lee faces as a queer man looking for a means of being desired by someone else. Yet that desire also becomes as much an addiction as the recreational drugs that Burroughs indulges himself within.

That’s part of where the challenge with a text like Queer lies, because Burroughs had never finished the story even at the time of its publication. So it only makes sense that Luca Guadagnino and Justin Kuritzkes went and sought an adaptation of Burroughs as a person alongside the novel itself. It’s an interesting idea in theory, because William Lee is also Burroughs’s self-insert from Junkie which came prior in Burroughs’s bibliography, yet it may also be a perfect case for how this source material can end up hampering both Guadagnino and Kuritzkes’s own material. Still, it also results in maybe some of the most visually inventive work of Guadagnino’s career, also aided by the fact it was similarly shot by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom.

Nonetheless, Craig and Starkey find humanity to these characters especially as opposite ends of a love affair that just may not work out properly. Craig in particular stands out for how he captures the heartbreak of that constant loneliness, especially as it stems from the desire to be loved – although that in turn ends up becoming an addiction for himself. Where Luca Guadagnino achieves such intimacy comes from the manner in which he frames those sex scenes, but they’re also shot in such a way that they all feel very oppressive. They’re oppressive in the sense that you feel suffocated by that same loneliness, as Lee searches for a particular feeling which he won’t ever get unless his relationship with Allerton is anything meaningful.

Lots of publicity surrounding Queer has indeed pointed out the fact that Drew Starkey is often nude for most of the time in which he appears on the screen. Yet the most striking thing about what Drew Starkey offers to this role is that he’s a perfect picture of what William S. Burroughs wanted most out of his own life. Guadagnino and Kuritzkes offer more humanity to such a composite being from Burroughs’s own ramblings, especially with how Starkey realizes that in being an idealized man for Lee’s desires, he can’t always find himself trapped down below. It only adds greater tragedy underneath, especially as he doesn’t feel the same sort of love that he wishes for.

For better or worse, Queer might be as close as we can get to understanding what’s really on William S. Burroughs’s mind as he was writing this book. Because the book was never finished, there’s also the added challenge for Guadagnino and Kuritzkes to try and envision what happens next, for it’s also where Queer finds itself at its most interesting. Even then, if you’re coming in with full knowledge of what Burroughs’s writing can encompass, it also retains that same frustration in knowing that Queer is a film all about drug addiction in relation to gay desires, and it starts rambling on in the same way Burroughs does. That alone might be fascinating, but it’s also evident where the limits are in adapting Burroughs to the screen.

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Watch a clip right here.

All images via A24.

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Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes, based on the novel by William S. Burroughs
Produced by Luca Guadagnino, Lorenzo Mieli
Starring Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, Henry Zaga
Premiere Date: September 3, 2024 (Venice)
Running Time: 135 minutes