It’s a rare thing in the modern movie world, a director who can put out two stone-cold bangers in the same year. Spielberg, of course, has pulled it off thrice – in 1993, 2002, *and* 2005 – but he’s the exception to almost every movie rule. Now, though, Luca Guadagnino can put this honorific next to his name, earning a full 10 stars out of a possible 10 from me for his 2024 output. Back in April, Challengers rocketed into cinemas as a jolt of pure maximalist entertainment and now he’s here again in prime awards season with William S Burroughs adaptation Queer, a very different proposition yet just as brilliant, probably more so, than its immediate predecessor.
A semi-autobiographical story, adapted here for the screen by Challengers writer Justin Kuritzkes, Queer follows William Lee (Daniel Craig) in post-war 1940s Mexico City, mooching around Mexico City getting hammered drunk and picking up young, handsome men for casual sex. It’s a liminal life that suits him just fine until he meets young ex-GI Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), with whom he becomes obsessed until the pair start up an affair, one that transforms the fearless Lee suddenly into someone more nervous and anxious now that he has something/someone to lose. It’s a louche, loose story (that only gets looser as time goes on), one that is much more concerned with immersion in its beautiful world than marching through its plot.
It’s a great choice, giving ample room to both the incredible cinematography from Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and the perfectly hazy writing from Kuritzkes. Queer is absurdly easy to lose yourself in, gorgeous in every way possible. Fantastical night skies swirl with dark majesty and everything is just so incredibly *textured* – clothes on skin, sweat on windows, the omnipresent prickle of heats both humid and dry, and sex scenes that act as genuinely incisive character work. The result is a world you can almost touch or smell or even taste as various boozes are knocked back by everyone, but mostly Lee. Later, during a journey to the Ecuadorean jungle in search of yage (an old term for ayahuasca), things get even more stylistically bombastic. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score (bolstered by some wonderful anachronistic needle drops) blares, half music and half something more like the sound of a storm on the open ocean, and Guadagnino orchestrates drug trip sequences – so often a hackneyed retreat for a director – like I’ve literally never seen before.
It is, simply, extraordinary filmmaking, style both to boost the story and just for the sake of being damn stylish, much as the thumping score and pace of Challengers was. It would be a major ask for any actor to stand up to such a swirling maelstrom around them, and Daniel Craig steps up to that plate magnificently. His Lee is my favourite performance of the year so far, Craig knowing exactly when to deploy that pure James Bond movie star megawattage and when to disappear like a vapour into the role, an almost impossible balance that he navigates without ever putting a foot wrong.
He’s drunken, horny, needy, desperate, and altogether astonishing, light years away from either the heroics of Bond or the amiable goofiness of Benoit Blanc, Craig finding an entirely new mode and bringing it to magnetic life. Starkey, too, is a revelation, graduating from the mostly teen-focused stuff that has defined his career so far into something much more profound and daring, though it is Jason Schwartzman who really stands out amongst the supporting cast as Lee’s best friend Joe. As pudgy and hairy as he’s ever been, he’s an absolute riot; hilarious, gross, and somehow adorable in his sleaziness.
At its core, Queer is a dream, a memory, a muddied self-reflection, and you will either connect with that wavelength or you won’t. If you do, though, I’m not sure there’s been any other film in 2024 quite as transporting as this, or one that has managed to find room (in a stripped down runtime – Queer now runs at 135 minutes, much shorter than the purported three-plus hour original cut) for such a gripping balance of surreal style and lightning bolt acting. To put this sort of film out in any year would likely be career highlight for all but our most gifted of contemporary directors – for it to be premiering just six months after you last released a modern classic is on another level entirely.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 