13 hours Ago By Mid-day
Film: Queer Cast: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey Director: Luca Guadagnino Rating: 3/5 Runtime: 137 min “Queer” attempts to adapt Author William S. Burroughs deeply personal novel about lust, addiction, and even telepathy. But the resultant is not exactly kosher.
“Queer” feels a bit too manufactured to be genuinely moving or entrancing. The runtime is also too long for it to be a comfortable watch. Adapted by Justin Kurtizkes, Burroughs autobiographical novel, was written in the mid-1950s.
Luca Guadagnino, the director of “Call Me By Your Name” and “Challengers” has made yet another good-looking film with great production design, art direction, period specific costumes, piercing cinematography and a background score that embeds Sinead O’Connor and Nirvana among others but the narrative feels rather hollow and functions in a vacuum. The initial neo-noir tone presents as William “Bill” Lee, evidently middle-aged writer trying to pick up younger men. It’s an altogether gay love story between the much older Lee (Craig) a writer in postwar Mexico City who spends most of his days drinking, trying to find something to give his life reason, and the young Allerton (Drew Starkey).
Lee spots Allerton (Drew Starkey) in the street and he literally bows down to the attraction with Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” playing in the background. But after that first meet cute moment the couple’s shenanigans get rather repetitive and boring. Lee and Allerton come together, break apart, and come together again on a trip to the Amazon to experiment with ayahuasca- the root that could enhance telepathic communication.
Craig is charismatic, engaging and raw, and goes at his role without any inhibitions and Starkey, working with an underwritten character manages to hold his own. The film though doesn’t register emotionally because Guadagnino serves it vague and indecipherable. “Queer” has a 1980s art house look and feels rather out-of place in the modern context.
It also serves up explicit images of homo eroticism and surrealism in ambiguous fashion. This is a story about a man constantly searching for fulfillment but unable to find it and the film experience mirrors that feeling. Needing sex, drugs, and meaning are difficult things to convey and Guadagnino’s film only just about scratches the surface.
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