Luca Guadagnino’s Queer: The Artifice of Beauty and the Haunt of Love

In 1952, William S. Burroughs had been living in Mexico for three years. He had already shot and killed his common-law wife, writer Joan Vollmer, in a drunken game of William Tell. He had completed his debut novel Junkie, a semi autobiographical account of a man’s—William Lee—descent into heroin addiction. And immediately following Junkie’s completion, Burroughs set to work on a formally separate sequel, Queer, a novella that was to be left unfinished even after its delayed publication in 1985.

Luca Guadagnino and Justin Kurtizkes reteam after their sensational ménage à trois Challengers to parse Burroughs’ slim novel, which is inextricably linked to his own person. Guadagnino makes it clear in its opening sequence that this is Burroughs’ story, no matter if the heroin- and alcohol-ridden protagonist calls himself “William Lee.” The final image of the title sequence rests on a typewriter, a manuscript of Queer in process, before bringing us in media res. But, at the same time, this story is a fiction. In a trick of adaptation, Kuritzkes’s script expertly excavates the surrealism and mystery that bubbles under the dry, lonely prose present in Burroughs’ novel. Together, Guadagnino and Kurtzkes expand the scope of Queer to hold the mirror more closely to Burroughs.

Queer follows a middle-aged American expat living in Mexico City. William Lee (Daniel Craig) spends his days drinking and cruising, attempting to pick up straight boys or rent boys for the night in seedy motels. He certainly does not make his intentions unknown, but vague (or he himself cowardly) enough to be rejected and not completely sour his relationships (or so he may think). With Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” playing, Lee waltzes through the streets of Mexico with a bravado he is only capable of in a country and people he feels a superiority over. William Lee is a lonely queer addict. His senses dulled by his disease, he aches for a connection, a love to fill the emptiness. His cruising is just another stand-in for a hit, returning to a hotel room with an eerily beautiful local, until it is over and Lee is left alone and naked again. His strolling leads him to a street “cock fight,” where finally Eugene Allerton’s (Drew Starkey) eyes—a younger, beautiful and statuesque GI—find him.

Daniel Craig does away with the suave masculinity of James Bond for a performance so heartbreakingly sad that you forget the movie star we have become accustomed to. Craig plays William Lee with a desperation that never stops overflowing out of him: it seeps from his pores, is mixed with his sweat, spit and cum. His obsession with Allerton consumes him, and his alcohol and drug use worsens as he pursues the younger man. Guadagnino frames a long take of Lee preparing and shooting up heroin even when he is finally going to have Allerton all to himself.

Guadagnino said this is not a story about unrequited love and that is certainly true. Allerton is entertained by Lee’s tasteless jokes, he is undeniably attracted to him. By the time they finally consummate their attraction, Allerton is the one seducing the elder, queer man. When pressed whether he enjoys the sex—and in true DL (down-low) behavior, he’s bottoming and giving his body into Lee’s desires and carnage—Allerton gives an obvious affirmation. Drew Starkey understands the distance needed to play Allerton, a young man with his own questions inside. He is unknowable to Lee because Lee cannot look past his own desires and projections.

Allerton and Lee are mirrors of each other. Those mirrors are just showing the other their past and future. But only Allerton is able to see that truth. It is what scares him and what keeps him at a distance. He is attracted and wants the man before him, but Lee’s mess—addiction, withdrawal sickness, anger, spite, obsession—pushes Allerton from accepting his queerness. He sees a future that frightens him. “I’m not queer. I’m disembodied.” Even after an ayahuasca trip brings their bodies and souls to their most truthful state, that fear prevails.

If plot seems unclear or thin, that is by design. Burroughs’ own novel runs continuously, scenes collapse onto the next, monologues about nothing last for pages, or some moments simply end abruptly. Kuritzkes and Guadgnino further mystify with the addition of dream (or nightmare) sequences, hallucinations that serve to tether aspects of Burroughs’ life, like the murder of his wife, his stint in prison and even references to his time in  conversion therapy as an adolescent. The novel is a construction of Burroughs’ mind to work through his own demons. His perception of Mexico and its people is warped, shown through a complete lack of engagement with the culture and reality of the place. Guadagnino and production designer Stefano Baisi shot on soundstages that create an impression of Mexico City—its design bringing to mind Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Querelle—to reveal Lee’s ignorance and the artifice of beauty surrounding him. 

Luca Guadagnino is obsessed with beauty, and yet his films are full of flaws. They’re perfectly manicured and designed: Jonathan Anderson’s divine costuming, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s otherworldly cinematography. But then there is the anachronistic music, cuts that break the rhythm of a scene, continuity thrown out the window. What Guadagnino does is get to the heart of his subjects. Seemingly meaningless details that he cuts to are significant to the characters inhabiting those spaces. What is happening between two actors is more important than the continuity of how many kabobs Allerton has consumed. In this scene, as Lee and Allerton are at dinner together, Lee, in his self-conscious and overcompensating nature, monologues at length about the homosexuals of the city and in the States. He is desperate for approval from the younger man, trying to assert that he is unfortunately queer, but not like those queers. He wears his shame like an achievement, and meanwhile Allerton does not utter a word. He sits there, silently devouring his endless kabobs. He knows he holds power over Lee, he gets off on it. It is a pivotal illustration of the pyschosexual power dynamics in their relationship, and perhaps the sexiest scene in the film. In this scene and throughout the film, Guadagnino’s proclivity for beauty reveals its artificiality, how beauty can poison love or taint it at the very least.

Queer is a challenging film. It is not necessarily a kind or optimistic film about the queer experience. In fact, the audience for it is more than likely slim—even among gay men. But, Guadagnino recognizes the inherent loneliness in queerness. He is not turning away from it—no, he confronts, reveals it. Leaving the film, I am left with the impression of Lee and Allerton’s bodies against each other. Their contrast. Allerton bronzed with a perpetual glow. Lee sallow and always covered in sweat. Their legs entwined together: clean, splotched with age, slender, shaking.

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