QUEER

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville, Drew Droege, Omar Apollo

Director Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes first worked together on the film Challengers which came out earlier this year. Now they’ve reunited for Queer, an adaptation of William S. Burrough’s novel of the same name. On the outside, Queer may seem like a follow up type of film to Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, but they’re incredibly different explorations of gay characters. Queer is set in Mexico City in the 1950s and identifying as gay or queer is kept under the surface. Daniel Craig plays William Lee, who is thought of as a literal doppelganger for William S. Burroughs. Lee is an American expat living in Mexico City spending most of his days in a depressed, lonely state. We see Lee trolling the streets looking for nightly male companions who all happen to be much younger than him. He’s also a heroin addict and has a drinking problem. He initiates conversation with Drew Starkey’s character, Eugene Allerton. He’s a young American man who’s also living there and seems far more comfortable in his skin than Lee does. They become lovers with Lee becoming far more enraptured in the new romance than Eugene does. Eugene may seem reluctant, but there’s an enticing nature to Lee. Together they travel around heading into the depths of a jungle to meet a supposed botanist played by an unrecognizable Lesley Manville. In theaters

Here’s my review