Queer
Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) takes us to Mexico City in 1950 for this romantic tragedy based on a novella by William S. Burroughs with Daniel Craig as an American expat who falls in love with a younger man.
It takes audacity to translate the work of William S. Burroughs for the screen, but Luca Guadagnino’s spin on the Beat legend’s autobiographical novel matches its source material in vulnerability and taboo-smashing adventurousness.
Lee (Daniel Craig) mingles with the expatriate set in postwar Mexico City, wandering its streets, frequenting its gay bars, ingesting whatever illicit substances are available and having joyless sex with gay men. He is a consummate raconteur who has no trouble finding an audience, but he is also a desperately lonely, middle-aged addict with an alarming fondness for guns. Early in Queer, Lee sets his sights on a journey to the Amazon in search of the hallucinogenic and potentially telepathic drug ayahuasca – and he wants handsome young bi-curious Oklahoman Allerton to accompany him. Their travels will yield a string of unexpected encounters and provide Lee with sobering lessons in what Burroughs dubbed ‘the algebra of need.’
Adapted by Justin Kuritzkes (who wrote Guadagnino’s Challengers), Queer is both faithful to the book and a radical re-imagining. Period detail is offset by anachronistic musical choices, while an eerie epilogue alludes to the real-life tragedy that prompted Burroughs’ writing career. Through it all, Craig makes Lee his own, creating a fully lived-in protagonist whose unruly obsessions lead to something akin to enlightenment. (source: www.tiff.net, adapted)