William Lee (Daniel Craig), a middle-aged American expat, sees the small few blocks of Mexico City where he now resides as his kingdom and pleasure dome.  He spends his afternoons watching the young men through town, his evenings getting drunk, and his nights either sleeping with the object of his fascination or retiring to his cluttered apartment to get high.  After setting his sights on Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a tall, bookish, and seductively sly, retired Navy man, Lee cannot break his enamorment and seeks to form a meaningful relationship with the man who may or may not return those same desires. 

Director Luca Guadagnino reteams with scriptwriter Justin Kuritzkes, composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, and editor Marco Costa to adapt William S. Burroughs’ 1985-published but early 1950s-written novella Queer, debuting the work at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival where it was acquired by A24 for distribution in the United States with Mubi handling many of the international markets.  Already floundering under the weight of their Q4, or more specifically even, just their December slate, the title expanded to a little under 500 screens stateside before the holiday frenzy quickly pushed it from cinemas entirely.  Guadagnino’s adaptation stretches the short text to an impressive and evocative 137 minutes, and while the film is a purposeful exercise in patience, the director delivers one of his finest works to-date. 

Queer opens with still shots of the various paraphernalia that litters Lee’s room – wrinkled bed sheets, crumpled manuscripts, worn passports, pistols – with blue writing, frantically brushed over the frame without stopping to mind the splatter; a meticulous mess.  It is a perfect entry into the tortured world of Lee’s own making, and Craig fills the role with a sickeningly satisfying self-loathing that is impossible to look away from.  Lee is a character always itching for his next fix, be it a shot of mezcal, a fling with an anonymous lover, or heroin, and when he is in between those fixes, he is a man incredibly uncomfortable in his own skin despite always flaunting through the room with an air of confidence.  This is all accentuated by the very sweaty nature of the film, though notably it is not sweaty in a grimy, dirty way, nor is it sweaty in an erotic and exciting way as the ménage à trois in Gudagino’s Challengers (2024). The shirts sit, loose and deeply unbuttoned atop Lee’s aging frame, a waning confidence that dares onlookers to catch a glimpse, but there is notable discomfort here. Craig threads the careful needle in his performance of a man that is too scared to admit the shame he feels at his self sabotaged life and too proud to reach out for the hands that try to pull him from his drowning.

It all plays in contrast to Starkey’s Allerton who, despite also being incredibly uncomfortable in his own skin, shows it in an entirely different way and there is nary a bead of sweat upon his taught, porcelain skin; safe, of course, for the wildly transportive third act.  Allerton is a real enigma of a character, and even from our fly on the wall perspective, the script is entirely through Lee’s lens so we never can tell what Allerton’s real intentions are as he indulges Lee in the evenings after having spent the afternoons pursuing Mary (Andra Ursuta)over a game of chess and a cocktail.  The mystery lures us in, and Starkey seems to make the whole thing seem easy as he does so little, yet we are drawn so deeply in – again, because the script is so rooted in Lee’s perspective, we cannot help but to become addicted as well – while never fully trusting the man.  There are moments where he lets his guard down, like the first time at Lee’s apartment for the night, but he fades away quickly like a dream come the morning.  Later, he fills a comforting role as he fosters Lee through his withdrawal while they are on holiday, teasing that maybe there is something more to this otherwise, lopsided presentation of a relationship, but again, we can never be sure.  It is this constant mystery of emotions that wraps itself loosely around us like silk, yet we are still uncomfortable, more through a self-conscious realization that the loosely draped silk leaves much that was once private, revealed and vulnerable. 

Guadagnino breaks this lazy hangout and really tests his audience with a sharp turn in the third act that finds the pair deep in the jungles of Ecuador, seeking an audience with Dr. Cotter (Lesley Manville), a renowned scientist on the many medicinal and hallucinogenic qualities of yagé; a native root said to aid in telepathy.  Lee had been hinting across the narrative to this point that he has always been fascinated by telepathy, a power that ties well into the themes of the story about how one can communicate secrets and desires to others, even in mixed company. It is a theme that can be applied to all aspects of queer culture across the decades, as well; signals, glances, a handkerchief in the pocket, a single piercing in the right ear, the crude blip of a Grindr notification.  While Queer is very much set in a fully realized time and place, the themes of the story are timeless, stretching out and back, and it plays like a memory to anyone within the community who has had that questioning crush.

That establishment of location, of style, of pacing makes the third act shift to Ecuador so jarring, but when viewed from above, the final act does indeed provide the last few pieces of the puzzle which Guadagnino has been meticulously fretting over despite the sense that these final pieces seem to be forming a separate picture entirely with harsher, more violent colors. Even still, the patient audience will realize that they lock into place with the more wistful pastels of the first two acts.  It all culminates into a fever dream as the two men, in their hazy stupor, melt and fuse into each other, filling the emptiness inside of them with everything that the other loves about them, and once full of that lust, all that is left in the other to give is everything which they hate – contempt being a touch to mild of a term here – causing them to tear apart from each other, irreparably damaged, and scarred from the schism. 

At times a work of Viscontian voyeurism – perhaps “Death in Mexico City” – at other times a Sirkian drama following a fated and forbidden desire, Queer, as envisioned by Guadanigo metamorphosizes into an avant-garde examination of identity, the coming out process, acceptance, self-love and self-loathing. The film is bolstered by an incredible tit-for-tat pair of performances from its two leading men – like oil and water, but leaving behind those toxic yet enticing iridescent swirls – and supported by a zany, campy, though never out of place ensemble that fills out sunbeaten terrace of purgatory. Its wild swings in the third act can be cause to put ones back up against the film, but soon enough the fever will overtake even the most dispassionate of its audience given how severe and raw some of the images are, dripping with sweat and humidity but glistening in the light from the galaxy’s stars above. One with each other, one with the earth, one with the dust of the universe on the precipice of implosion, Lee is trapped in a cosmic cycle doomed to repeat itself in the same way as the ouroboros is doomed to devour itself.