In 'Queer,' Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey share 'unsynchronized love' and a brutal ayahuasca trip
Luca Guadagnino’s 'Queer' stars Daniel Craig as a loquacious heroin-addicted expat living in 1950s Mexico City, and Drew Starkey as the man who becomes his obsession.
From its grunge rock and ‘80s pop soundtrack to the intentionally artificial backdrops inspired by old Hollywood studio films, “Challengers” director Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” is a trippy tribute to the life and work of Beat writer William S. Burroughs. Largely based on Burroughs’ unfinished novel of the same name, the film stars Daniel Craig as the writer’s alter ego — a loquacious, heroin-addicted expat living in 1950s Mexico City — and Drew Starkey as the younger man who becomes his obsession. Teeming with references to the “Junkie” and “Naked Lunch” novelist’s life and works, “Queer” portrays two men searching for connection but stifled by their own repressive tendencies and an era that views their desires as deviant.
“Luca put it beautifully in that, it’s not a story about unrequited love, it’s a story of unsynchronized love — in another time and place, yes, but not now,” Craig told NBC News ahead of the movie’s limited theatrical release on Nov. 27 (its nationwide release is Dec. 13).
“That’s the tragedy of the film: There’s a moment where you think, ‘This could be,’” he said. “And it’s not to be.”
“Queer” was almost exclusively shot on a soundstage at Cinecittà Studios in Rome.Yannis Drakoulidis / A24“Queer,” which was almost exclusively shot on a soundstage at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, opens with a Sinéad O’Connor cover of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” in a nod to frontman Kurt Cobain’s own affection for Burroughs, a writer known for his public aloofness and icy, obscene wit. From there, the film loosely follows the plot of the Beat novelist’s slim book, composed during a tumultuous handful of years living in Mexico City to avoid drug charges — before shooting and killing his wife, allegedly, during a game of "William Tell."
Like Burroughs’ protagonist, Craig’s convivial but haunted William Lee wanders the streets and bars of the Mexican capital looking for his next drink and unsatisfying sexual encounter, until he comes across a moody and mysterious ex-soldier named Eugene Allerton, played by Starkey. Awakened from years of drug-fueled apathy, the older expat forms a slavish attachment to the younger man whose reticence only fuels his yearning.
Rating: 5