“The character study stays with you the longest, because it is here that direction, writing, and the performance are perfectly in line with each other and among some of the best work Guadagnino has ever done.”

Although he has always had an eye for aesthetic beauty, what many people miss in Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s films is how some of them are tinged with a certain kind of sadness and melancholy. He is a perfect fit then for Queer, an adaptation of the short novel by the same title by American author William S. Burroughs. Written in the early ’50s but not published until 1985 because of its homosexual content (as if the title didn’t already give that away), its specific period and location setting (Mexico City in the early ’50s) fit perfectly with Guadagnino’s visual sensibilities. But it’s the character work on the lonely and self-loathing protagonist, a wonderful role by British actor Daniel Craig, playfully toying with his James Bond image, that truly makes the film hit home. Despite a large tonal shift in the final third and some clunky tech work, Queer is one of those films where not a whole lot happens, yet you can’t take your eyes off it.

William Lee is an American expat living in Mexico City off an income of undisclosed nature. He fills his days with alcohol and quick sex with other men, although he is mostly successful with the former, not so much with the latter. He is part of a community of gay expats spending their GI Bill benefits and money earned with part-time jobs much the same as William does in the many gay bars the city has on offer (judging by the film, Mexico City at the time was overrun by queer men). When Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) enters the scene, William immediately sets his eye on him, despite the fact that neither he nor his friends (among whom is an almost unrecognizable Jason Schwartzman) are sure if Eugene is actually queer. He does play chess with that pretty lady Mary an awful lot, after all.

Still, after flitting around Eugene for a while, one night William succeeds at getting Eugene into his small apartment and into his bedroom, and after some clumsy fumbling performs oral sex on him (something he also notably does in the film’s first sex scene with an unnamed Omar Apollo; there is a sense of submission in the character that comes from this). The Bond-like suave demeanor that is a front for a lot of insecurity melts away when Eugene returns the favor (though manually). For a while the two form a couple, more or less, until Eugene starts distancing himself from William after the latter’s opiate addiction is revealed. William tries everything to get back in Eugene’s good graces, finally bribing him to go on an all-expenses-paid trip to the jungles of Ecuador is search of a drug called yage (better known as ayahuasca), which William believes would give you telepathic powers.

This trip (in more than one way) into the final act contains probably the most poignant summation of William’s character when someone asks him, “Who is it you are so desperately trying to communicate?” At this point Queer takes a wild mood swing and becomes the equivalent of stoner movies like Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, especially once the couple reach an unrecognizable Lesley Manville as a jungle-embedded researcher who is a specialist in the drug. This inevitably leads to trippy scenes that are very reminiscent of David Lynch’s work (the deep red hallways are almost a direct reference to Twin Peaks‘ Red Room), and it is a big shift from the film’s first two acts. It’s a disorienting transition, which given the drug element is perhaps fitting but also fails the film. While the section works in isolation, especially in the way William and Eugene connect while under the influence and the way this is visualized, there is no congruence with the melancholy tone that underlines the loneliness and sadness of the Mexico City narrative, let alone the sultriness of a community of gay men mingling and checking each other out as if in some choreographed dance, exquisitely shot by DoP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. His images, dappled in the heat of late afternoon or the neons of sweaty nights, the sun reflecting on polished American classics, are gorgeous interpretations of Dennis Hopper paintings if Hopper had lived in Mexico. There is an elegant touch in the use of sound stages (in an obvious way) as opposed to shooting on location, and the use of practical miniatures instead of CGI, which gives Queer the aura of a film from the time period it is set in. Once CGI is actually used in the film’s final act, it’s not the best work, and there are several errors in continuity editing that break the spell, but the sensuality and pervasive sadness of William’s journey through the back alleys of Mexico City are among the most beautifully rendered images of the year.

While the cast is extensive, the film leans heavily on Craig’s and Starkey’s performances. Manville and Schwartzmann are comic relief, and the others barely register, but Starkey’s vulnerable and loving work as a young man who doesn’t really know what to do with this older queer man but in a way takes him under his wing is perfectly tuned to Craig’s immersive performance as the film’s central character. It is a brave role for Craig to take on, as it shies away from his usual brutish roles (even if he plays with that image in some sense), instead portraying a man with huge insecurities hidden under a veneer of world-weariness and alcohol. When the film reveals his second addiction, to heroin, the way the British actor shoots up and then drifts off into the ether, wordless and without anyone else around, is a veritable masterclass in acting without dialogue and just the face.

The interesting thing to note about Queer is that it is a film in which very little happens and which is more a character study, yet once things do start happening it becomes a less interesting film but with intriguing surrealist touches. The two parts don’t really mesh, at least not as well as in the novel; it is the character study that stays with you the longest, because it is here that direction, writing, and the performance are perfectly in line with each other and among some of the best work Guadagnino has ever done without much narrative thrust, as if in an intoxicated dream of a ’50s postcard Mexico, and for once his aesthetics are gorgeous as ever but don’t do the heavy lifting. Queer is an imperfect film, but in moments it is so perfect that you want to step into that ’50s postcard.

(c) Image copyright: Yannis Darkoulidis