Queer

Queer

Based on a short story by William Burroughs this movie explored the dissolute life of middled aged William Lee, who spent his time frequenting the gay bars in downtown Mexico City. It really was a simple romantic movie that looked at an infatuation with innocence and a journey to recovery from drug addiction.

The story, such as it was was tissue thin, very little happened by way of action, and we had inserted numerous dream sequences and fantasy elements that reflected in an emotional turmoil.

Overall I can't recommend this movie. It was at best of 5 out of 10. I enjoyed it whilst I was watching it but it really had very little substance. Despite some very strong acting from the central leads much of the dialogue was banal and tedious.

I'm all for using movies to evoke some type of emotion but this movie took that quite literally by combining random images with random music and hoping we feel what the director felt. There's almost no connection between anything. It's like the writer took a bunch of pills, got high, and wrote the script. Then the director and the whole cast smoked a ton of weed and then made this. Whatever this is.

Trust me, I know very well what the director was going for. I'm gay. I know all about the queer culture, how lonely it is, and how we all long for a lasting connection with someone much younger and hotter than us. This movie makes that very clear. And I love that it explored that. But why was it necessary to get high to do that?? The whole thing feels like a hallucination trip. There is minimal dialog. There are looooooong scenes with no dialog at all. Sometimes for 5-10 minutes. We're just staying on a close up of someone's face or watching them perform an action but ultimately nothing is happening on screen except for some subtle movement which is just not enough to keep you engaged or interested.

Thank god I watched this at home and I could fast forward. Many times I skipped forward 20-30 seconds and it was STILL the same exact shot on screen. That's crazy!! That's not movie making. That's not a masterpiece. You're not being some kind of genius by boring us to death. You can't just play an upbeat tempo song for 5 minutes and show us one shot and think that will do the trick.

As far as the acting goes... I can't believe Daniel Craig did this. I'm talking full nudity, full on gay sex, tons of making out... the whole 9 yards.

The Mexico setting was a complete miss in this one. It did not fit the theme at all. The sets were ridiculous. They were very well made but just completely wrong for this movie.

I was a huge fan of Call me By Your Name but I think this might have been the last Luca movie I'll ever see. At least for a while. My time was completely wasted.

Daniel Craig is clearly making an effort to put down some markers with his post Bond choices. I don't blame him, it's such a suffocating role. The polar opposite, here he's William, a gay American in 1950s Mexico. A very William S. Burroughs premise, who wrote the generally autobiographical book this is based on. It's not Naked Lunch, but it does have an unsettling vibe. Not helped by unusual needle drops from Nirvana, Prince and New Order that just don't fit. William is lonely... and horny. So really, William is frustrated. That is until he meets Eugene (Drew Starkey) and they bond over war stories in the dry heat that drips from the screen. William is infatuated, but doesn't know if the younger Eugene is, or if he's even queer. It doesn't help that William has a self-deprecating, unconfident nature, although vast amounts of cheap booze and cigarettes seem to help. It's an awkward love/lust story, with a lob-sided feeling that William is destined to be hurt. Panama hats, linen suits, glass coke bottles and rusting Cadillacs driving down sunburnt dusty streets, past the daytime drinkers. There's a sordid, lazy, quietly hedonistic tone. Where time is largely irrelevant. The perfect place for William to wallow in a heroin stupor as Eugene leads him on, encourages him, pushes him away. Things don't change much as William tries to whisk Eugene away on a trip to Ecuador, but he does at least have him to himself. William's on a mission though, to source a plant that produces the drug Yage (nope me neither), that's said to give the user a telepathic experience. Here the music does get interesting. Scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, although still oddly modern, it depicts perfectly William's obsessive and destructive nature. One that leads him deep into the jungle to find Dr Cotter (Lesley Manville). Who helps both William and Eugene discover things that they already knew. It's all very striking, but I'm not sure that's enough. Craig is pretty fantastic, but Queer did lose me toward the end, even though I'm a big fan of some Lynchian style surrealism. Ultimately I think Burroughs is just better on the page, but this is still an interesting adaptation.

I hadn't planned on seeing Queer in the movie theatre and was going to wait till it came to streaming but a friend wanted to see it so I went along. I'm actually glad that I did because it's a very interesting and beautiful film visually speaking. Like most Burroughs stories there will be characters involved in heavy drug use and so I was aware of that and kind of expecting much of the story to be told through a characters drug hazed/influenced/induced eyes. That can be tricky as much of the story is expressed via metaphors and odd/quirky/hard to decipher visuals. In Queer that all worked quite well and while I anticipated possibly leaving the theatre confused and wondering, I actually left satisfied. Trent Reznor produced all of the music and I think he did a bang-on job with most of the music really hitting the nail on the head for me emotionally. As for the performances, Craig turned in a very solid performance on a role that was a tricky one to pull off but I think he did indeed pull it off quite well. Jason Schwartzman was great and his character provided some much needed levity to this film. All of the remaining characters were all solid supporters and contributors. Guadagnino's direction was well executed and i will say seeing a few of his that he does have a special way of blending the camera, with the lighting, and the music so perfectly during the lighter and more tender moments of his films to really generate a vibe, yet without being too obvious soas to smother the moment. I do think the third part in the jungle could have benefitted from some prudent editing as I felt like it went on a bit too long, or maybe it didn't really need to take actually take place in a jungle at all? Something to consider. Queer is not an 'easy' film to watch and it will not be for everyone. Either way, I was pleasantly surprised by how effective, interesting, amd moving Queer was and consider it well worth checking out.

I was deeply moved by Call Me by Your Name; suffice to say, it left a lasting impact on me. As a heterosexual myself, I never anticipated that a love story between two individuals of the same sex could resonate so profoundly. It opened a doorway for me and inspired me to delve deeper into other LGBTQ stories.

Regrettably, I cannot extend the same level of admiration to "Queer."

While the performances by Craig and Starkey are commendable, their characters or rather the storytelling at core did not resonate with me. Intricacies of the relationship too failed to evoke the kind of emotional response I was expecting.

However, the final thirty minutes of the film provides an extraordinary experience, offering a sense of catharsis that is quite experimental, even for a filmmaker like Luca Guadagnino, who often deviates from traditional narratives.